Aizawl, Apr 21(Reporter) Replacement of defective and faulty electronic voting machines (EVMs) and voter-verifiable paper Audit Trail (VVPATs) was minimal in the election to the lone Lok Sabha Mizoram seat for which polling was held on Friday, a senior state election department official said on Sunday. Additional Chief Electoral Officer H. Lianzela said only 10 each of EVM’s Ballot Unit (BU) and Control Unit (CU) as well as 25 units of VVPATs were found to be defective and replaced in the entire state during Friday polling. “As compared to elections held earlier, including the election to the state legislative Assembly held on November 7 last year, replacement of EVMs and VVPATs were negligible during polling held on Friday,” Lianzela said, adding that it was almost hassle-free in the last polls. The latest M3 model of EVMs/VVPATs manufactured by ECIL was used for the just concluded General Election to the Lok Sabha, he said. He said that the Election Commission of India deployed a sufficient quantity of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) along with Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) for the conduct of the election in Mizoram. Lianzela said the voters’ turnout on Friday’s polling was 56.87 percent while the number of votes polled through postal ballots and Electronically Transmitted Postal Ballot System (EPBS) are yet to be added to the poll turnout. He said that a total of 4,87,103 electorates (2,41,213 male voters and 2,45,800 female voters) exercised their franchise in the election to the Mizoram Lok Sabha seat in 1,276 polling stations. All the election materials have been under lock and key in the strong rooms in Aizawl city and 10 other districts where elaborate security arrangements have been made, he said, adding that counting of votes will be undertaken on June 4 with the rest of the country in 13 counting centers and 40 counting halls. Votes polled in 40 Assembly segments will be counted in each counting hall...////...