This election, 90 crore Indians voted to elect their next government. It witnessed the Election Commission commissioning 22.3 lakh ballot units, 16.3 lakh control units and 17.3 lakh VVPATs.

Of these 17.3 lakh VVPATs, a physical count of 20,625 VVPAT slips was to be done this election season as compared to the earlier election where 4,125 VVPAT slips were counted. This after the Supreme Court ordered a tally of VVPATs in five polling stations instead of one in every assembly segment.

After the counting was done, it was found that there wasn't a single case of a mismatch between the VVPAT slip and the EVM count, according to Election Commission data.

The report was submitted by Chief Electoral Officers from across states. According to CEOs, there wasn't a single mismatch reported anywhere out of the 20,625 VVPATs that were tallied.

This is a record that has been maintained since VVPATs were first brought in from 2013-14.

Prior to the election results, the country witnessed an aggressive campaign by the Opposition parties who questioned the credibility of EVMs and VVPATs. They demanded for a 100 per cent count to counter alleged manipulation of EVMs. They even demanded last-minute changes in the VVPAT tallying procedure for counting day, a demand that the Election Commission rejected.

Opposition parties had even knocked on Supreme Court's doors. The Supreme Court had ordered that VVPAT slips in five polling stations across each assembly segment must be counted.

Leaders like Chandrababu Naidu and Mamata Banerjee were up in arms against the EVMs and VVPAT alleging malfunctions and manipulations by the ruling government.

The issue of EVM credibility and VVPAT auditing has been raised repeatedly by a number of political parties. At a meeting held on August 27, 2018 the EC had with all political parties, almost the entire opposition had joined hands with the Congress to demand a return to ballot paper based voting rather than the EVM.

Many political parties suggested that VVPAT counting must be upped- from one polling booth per constituency to 10 per cent - 30 per cent VVPATs in a constituency.

But without even a single VVPAT-EVM tally mismatch, prima facie it looks like the VVPAT issue was just an excuse without any evidence to back it.