The Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) will deliver 21 lakh equipment, including ballot units, control units and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines, to the Election Commission by October 2023, Union Minister Jitendra Singh said on Sunday. The equipment supplied by the ECIL, a public sector enterprise under the Department of Atomic Energy, is likely to be used in the 2024 general elections.
The ECIL and the Bharat Electronics Limited, a public sector undertaking under the Ministry of Defence, manufacture electronic voting machines and VVPATs for the Election Commission. In its annual report for 2020-21, the ECIL had said it was gearing up towards mass production of EVMs required for the general elections in 2024. Addressing the media on Sunday, Singh, the minister of state in the Prime Minister's Office, said the 2023 Science Vision will define India in 2047, the centenary year of Independence.
Singh said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had highlighted the need to take science and technology-related research to the local level in order to make India a global center of research and innovation as it marches towards the centenary of its Independence. He said science departments of the government have already outlined their roadmap for 2023 with the Indian Space Research Organisation turning its focus on scientific exploration missions, technology demonstration missions and human spaceflight programme “Gaganyaan”.
The Department of Biotechnology would take forward the successes of COVID-19 vaccine mission by investing in the improvement of vaccines for existing and emerging diseases, Singh said. Significantly, major missions would also be launched on millets and patho-genomics of plant viruses in the International Year of Millets.
The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research will also focus on Green Hydrogen as it has already made a headway in the field as part of the clean energy mission. The Ministry of Earth Sciences will focus on the Deep Ocean Mission and technologies that will add value to India's economy in the years to come, Singh said.
