It’s a battle that is being fought between the civil society and the government in the public space and in open courts – without a hint of any forward movement.
A crème de la crème bunch of civil society veterans – former civil servants, academics, writers and journalists, tech wizkids, activists and former judges are trying to push an envelope that is simply not willing to move.
“All I can say is that electronic voting machines (EVMs) are a live issue,” former Judge of the Supreme Court, Madan Lokur, told this reporter. He headed the Citizens’ Commission on Elections, an independent body that in 2021 recommended widespread reforms in the EVM system, calling for greater accountability to the public.
A rash of BJP triumphs in the Hindi heartland in the recent assembly elections – accompanied by a couple of significant losses in the south of the country a little earlier – have triggered a fresh round of controversy over the veracity of EVMs in a densely populated and vast country like India.
The VVPAT debate
This expert civil society group, despite raising some pertinent points - many of them before the apex court itself - are pretty much ploughing a lonely furrow for the moment.
{{/usCountry}}This expert civil society group, despite raising some pertinent points - many of them before the apex court itself - are pretty much ploughing a lonely furrow for the moment.
{{/usCountry}}Devasahayam MG, a former bureaucrat and member of this Commission, told this reporter: “Elections should not only be fair but also appear to be fair. The incessant and disorderly public debates, suspicion, and court cases around EVMs and Voter-Verifiable Paper Trail (VVPATs) are certainly not good for democracy.”
He added: “Most recently, allegations of malpractice were raised ahead of the counting of votes in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections, when a video emerged of officials sorting ballot papers from the strongroom in Balaghat. The Election Commission of India (ECI) should endeavour to put all doubts to rest. To engender complete public trust, elections need to be demonstrably and publicly verifiable. ”
Also read: Ahead of 2024 polls, EC starts awareness programme on EVMs
For the time being though, verification of EVMs appears to be a bridge too far. The Citizens Commission on Elections, concluded that “EVMs do not provide provable guarantees against hacking, tampering and spurious vote injections” and the “VVPAT system does not allow the voter to verify the slip before the vote is cast.”
According to Devasahayam, EVM/VVPAT voting does not comply with the essential ‘Democracy Principles’ - that each voter should be able to verify that her vote is cast-as-intended, recorded-as-cast and counted-as-recorded.
“Though the ECI has arranged for all EVMs to be accompanied with VVPAT-device, it has been reduced to the level of a ‘bioscope’, which shows up a tiny ‘paper slip’ for seven seconds that vanishes and is not counted,” he said.
Transparency in the VVPAT system
Devasahayam’s proposed reform: the VVPAT system should be re-calibrated to be fully voter verifiable. "A voter should be able to get the VVPAT slip in hand and cast it in a chip-free ballot box for the vote to be valid. These VVPAT slips should be fully counted first for all constituencies before the results are declared. For this purpose, VVPAT slips should be larger in size and must be printed in such a manner that they can be preserved for a minimum of five years,” he points out.
Former IAS officer Afzal Amanullah, who has conducted elections at various levels in the state, in a video statement said that in a time and age when the most sophisticated high tech IT hardware, bank accounts, mails and mobile phones can be hacked at will, an EVM is a relatively harmless equipment to break into – only someone – read the Election Commission - needs to check it out.
Earlier this month, the Election Commission told Congress leader Jairam Ramesh that the current EVMs in use in elections comply with the legal framework strengthened by successive Union governments. The EC reaction came in the backdrop of multiple letters sent by members of the opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) bloc raising concerns about the integrity of the machines.
The 28-party INDIA bloc had submitted a memorandum to the poll panel on August 9, 2023, asking questions about the use of EVMs and VVPATs. The bloc followed it up with four letters in the same month to meet with the EC.
The Commission, however, recently updated its Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) section on EVMs on its website from 76 to 85 to answer some of the questions but did not address the specific concerns raised by the parties.
Last November, the Supreme Court observed that enhancing the scale of EVM data cross-checking against VVPAT records would increase the Election Commission's work without any 'big advantage.’
So, for the moment, it is back to square one.