The diminishing faith of Indian voters in EVMs ANJAN KUMAR SAMAL 1 2 3 4 5
Let the Indian people be assured that under the law of Universal Adult Franchice, voting is their absolute right. When MB Haneefa, in 1980, had invented the first Indian Electronic Voting Machine (EVM), never would she have imagined that her device would one day become subject of one of the hottest debates in India's political waters. The Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections 2017 sparked off an immense and massive discourse on the effectiveness and fairness of the EVMs in the country.
In Focus An international conference on Indian EVMs and the related issue of them being vulnerable to tampering was held under the chairmanship of Subramanian Swami, at Chennai on February 13, 2010. The conclusion of the conference was that the Election Commission of India was shirking its responsibility in bringing transparency in the working of the EVMs. Now this issue has again raised it's ugly head after reports of EVMs being tampered with in Madhya Pradesh during a demonstration in the presence of Election Commission authorities, media personnel and local political leaders. During the demonstration, an electronic voting machine (EVM) always voted for a particular political party, ie the BJP each and every time irrespective of voting for any other political party. After this revelation, common Indian voters are in distress. Political parties like Congress, BSP and AAP have also alleged that the BJP won with a huge margin in the recent UP Assembly elections by tampering with EVMs. Technically, many international scientific researches have also revealed the sour-truth that EVMs can be meddled with and might provide wrong results in such case. In fact, most of the democratic countries across the world nowadays have banned EVMs and dwelled their faith in the good old ballot paper. So, why shouldn't the government of India look into this matter on a serious note and change the voting method by discarding EVMs and switching back to ballot paper? Let the Indian people's faith be restored in free and fair elections with their most valuable votes going to exactly the same political party for whom they vote. Although, it's been a long journey for EVMs, from the very first day they were pressed into service in 1982 in the by-election of North Paravur Assembly constituency in Kerala, but today the devices are under the clout of suspicion. Since the EVMs were commissioned in 1989 by the Election Commission of India in collaboration withElectronic Corporation of India Ltd, it is the moral duty of both the EC and the governmentof India to probe into these allegation. They should cancel the agreement of ECI Ltd and appoint a new credible EVM provider to restorethe faith of Indian voters.