Desi by design

Meet the team members who conceptualised the electronic voting machine

- SONI MISHRA

In early 1988, a small team of designers with an engineering background embarked on an ambitious project at IIT Bombay’s Industrial Design Centre (IDC). The team was asked to design an electronic voting machine (EVM) that would replace the conventional ballot system. The result: the EVM as we know it now.

The IDC had to design the EVM, from concept to the final prototype, based on the electronic design done by Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL). The Election Commission had entrusted the task of developing EVMs to BEL and the Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), both public sector undertakings. ECIL had, meanwhile, asked the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, to submit design proposals for the EVM. An earlier version of the EVMs was used on a trial basis in some booths in the 1982 Kerala assembly polls.

For a year and a half, the team at IDC worked on the design of a machine that would transform the way elections were conducted in the country. The team, led by Prof A.G. Rao, spent many nights in the IDC lab brainstorming for innovative solutions. The team found inspiration in the traditional ballot system, which they strove to capture in the EVM—the elliptical button that the voter presses on the EVM to cast a vote resembles a voter’s thumb impression.