Parties urge poll panel to have VVPAT paper trial counts, say EVMs unreliable

The Hindu, August 27, 2018

Commission says it will sort out with the Indian Statistical Institute’s help

NEW DELHI, AUGUST 27
Some political parties have requested the Election Commission to fix a certain percentage of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails’ (VVPATs) slips count to enhance the trust in Electronic Voting Machines.
This emerged at meeting that the Commission had with all the seven national parties and 34 State-recognised parties here on Monday.
The Commission assured the parties that this was being looked into with expert inputs from the Indian Statistical Institute. Interestingly, the meeting was held as 17 opposition parties were planning to approach the Commission demanding that ballot papers be used in the forthcoming 2019 Lok Sabha polls instead of EVMs and VVPATs.

Back to paper

The opposition has raised issues about the effectiveness of EVMs time and again, the last one being in June this year when by-elections were held for Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh.
The Congress said that EVMs have been found faulty and non-functional on multiple occasions and added that its “firm opinion” is that in order to restore the independence and integrity of the electoral process, the country must revert to paper ballot.
The principal opposition party pointed out that there were “innumerable complaints” that whichever button was pressed, the vote was polled and counted in favour of the BJP’s symbol.
“This has been noticed in UP, MP, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra and many others,” the Congress said adding that this has put a serious question mark on the credibility, independence and fairness of the EVMs. VVPATs are meaningless, the Congress added, if the paper trail is never to be counted.
Monday’s meeting was an attempt by the Commission to get the views of political parties on a variety of issues including what measures can be taken to improve the accuracy, transparency and inclusivity of electoral rolls in view of the forthcoming polls to the Assemblies and the Lok Sabha, issues relating to an expenditure ceiling for legislative council elections and limiting political parties’ expenditure.
At the meet, all the parties assured the Commission that they will extend all support in the process of preparing electoral rolls. They also suggested sharing copies of the deletion list. Some parties requested avoiding the festival season for roll revisions.

Revision in rolls

Party representatives were informed that the Commission has already taken this into account and revision in all States (excluding the poll-bound States), will start from September 1 and go on for two months. The parties also urged the Commission to link Aadhar numbers with electors’ details.
They also asked the Commission to see whether free air time could be provided on private media for electoral campaigns as is being done on Doordarshan and AIR.

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