LUCKNOW: After weeks of back and forth, the Election Commission of India finally agreed to provide the electronic voting machines ( EVMs ) required by the UP State Election Commission to hold the elections for 14 municipal corporations, along with other civic bodies. With this decision , a situation heading for a confrontation between the two autonomous bodies -- ECI and the SEC -- over allotment of voting machines, also stands defused.Earlier, the SEC had refused to accept the EVMs manufactured before 2006 which the EC was providing. When the EC showed its inability to provide upgraded EVMs manufactured after 2006, the SEC was planning to hold the entire urban bodies poll through ballot, while its earlier plan was to hold the polls for 14 corporations through EVMs and the rest through ballot.Now, that EC has agreed to provide post-2006 machines, the corporation polls would be held through EVMs, says state election commissioner SK Agarwal. Speaking to TOI, Agarwal , who fired two letters to the ECI and personally met the chief minister Aditya Nath Yogi twice last week to apprise him of the Central poll panel’s stand in this regard, said that the ECI wrote a letter to him on Monday confirming to provide the EVM for the civic polls.“The process has already been rolled out and there is no confusion over the civic polls which would now be held only through the EVMs,”Agarwal said. Now, UP will get 25,000 control units and 50,000 ballot units from Madhya Pradesh for holding civic polls in 14 cities.Polls for 14 municipal corporations, 194 Nagar Palika Parishad and 423 Nagar Panchayats are due due in June and the election process has to be completed before mid-July. The SEC had already started its preparations, which included voter revisions the rapid survey of the reserved seats and delimitation.Amid preparation, Agarwal reminded the ECI on March 31 for sending the EVMs to the state for the civic elections . “In 2012, the municipal corporation elections were held through EVMs and the rest through ballots. This time also, we had planned the same arrangement,” Agarwal told TOI.On this, the ECI asked the UP election body to contact MP for the EVMs where civic polls were held last year. When the UP SEC approached its counterpart in MP, it was told that the EVMs had been sent to Maharashtra where the civic polls were held early this year.When the UP SEC contacted the ECI again for the arranging the machines from Maharashtra, the ECI expressed its regret in providing the machines, stating that those EVMs had turned outdated, giving a jolt to SEC’s preparations. Before deciding on holding the polls through ballot, Agarwal decided to send another letter to the central poll panel as the latter had not send its formal refusal.ECI insiders told TOI that since ECI was under tremendous pressure from the Supreme Court and also facing the Opposition’s allegation that it used vulnerable machines which could be tempered, it was deliberately creating a situation which forced the UP SEC to hold the polls through ballot papers.However, Agarwal was not willing to go back to ballots and after his two meetings with the CM, the two decided that elections would be held through EVMs only. The thought was ‘using ballot papers at this juncture would give credence to Opposition’s charges about EVMs’.Therefore, Agarwal dispatched yet another letter to the ECI on Monday morning, seeking a final word from it for taking future course of action. He also spoke to the ECI to inform that he was also sending a senior officer of the commission to personally meet the authorities at the commission in Delhi and get a final word from it.The SEC’s pressure seems to have worked and after his third letter on Monday, the ECI responded immediately that the MP SEC would provide the EVMs.