The Union Cabinet today cleared a proposal of the Election Commission to procure paper trail machines for use during future elections.<br/><br/>The decision comes in the wake of growing demands from opposition parties for holding all future elections using<br/>paper trail machines along with EVMs, to clear doubts about votes cast.<br/>The clearance was given by the Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the proposal of "procurement of<br/>VVPAT units" after a brief discussion.<br/>The EC has sought Rs 3,174 crore in all for procuring over 16 lakh paper trail machines to cover all polling<br/>stations in the country.<br/><br/>The Cabinet has so far cleared two tranches of Rs 1,009 crore and Rs 9,200 for the Commission to buy new electronic<br/>voting machines (EVMs).<br/><br/>The Supreme Court has asked the Commission to give a tentative time frame by which it can use VVPAT machines in all polling stations.<br/>The EC says two PSUs — ECIL and BEL — need 30 months to produce the over 16 lakh VVPATs. Sixteen parties had recently petitioned the EC to revert to paper ballot system for greater transparency. <br/><br/>The VVPAT is a machine which dispenses a slip with the symbol of the party for which a person has voted for. The slip<br/>drops in a box but the voter cannot take it home.<br/><br/>The voters see voter-verifiable paper audit trail slip for seven seconds, which would be an acknowledgement receipt for the party they voted for in the election.