Dilip Shahani

Dilip T. Shahani is an electronics engineer and honorary professor at IIT Delhi, where he has taught and done research since 1973. He chairs the Election Commission of India’s technical expert committee on voting machines. He was named for the Padma Shri in 2022 in the field of literature and education, from Delhi ^[1].

Teacher at IIT Delhi

Shahani was born on 15 April 1950 ^[2]. He took a BTech in electronics and communication engineering at IIT Kharagpur in 1973 and a PhD at IIT Delhi in 1979 ^[2]. He is known for taking engineering teaching beyond the classroom with hands-on work for students, and won IIT Delhi’s awards for outstanding faculty in 1994 and excellence in teaching in 2011 ^[2].

Research for defence

Over four decades he has worked on more than 50 research projects for the Defence Research and Development Organisation, the Army, the Navy and other bodies ^[2]. In 1980 he developed a very low frequency antenna for the Navy ^[2]. He gave technical solutions to the Army Technology Board from 2006 to 2019 ^[2].

Voting machines

For about 17 years he has worked on the electronic voting machines (EVMs) used in Indian elections, first as a member and then as chairman of the Election Commission’s technical expert committee ^[2]. The voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) was designed and introduced in the 2014 general election, along with a detector that disables a machine if anyone tries to tamper with it ^[2]. The Election Commission gave him a national award for best electoral practices in 2017 ^[2].