The Election Commission on Sunday hit out at the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for finding fault in Electronic Voting Machines (EVMS) used in the Punjab elections. In a strong-worded letter, the Commission asked the party to introspect for its poor performance in recent polls than alleging tampering of EVMs.
“It is for the AAP to introspect as to why your party could not perform as per your expectations and it is unfair on your part to attribute unsatisfactory poll performance of your party to the alleged tamperability of EVMS,” the Commission stated in its 15 pages reply to the AAP’s petition seeking verification of the poll results.
The Commission has also said that AAP is free to file an election petition in the State High Court if it wants to verify votes cast in Punjab polls with data of paper trail.
The AAP alleged that poll authorities in Punjab had refused to accept its demand to tally results with paper trial audit.
The Commission said the Supreme Court had never expressed any doubt on use of EVMs in the election process, strongly objecting to ‘wrong and imaginary exploration’ of the Court order. “The Commission strongly objects to this wrong and imaginary extrapolation of Hon’ble Supreme Court’s order. This may please be noted as a responsible political party,” it said.
Dismissing the allegations of EVM tampering, the Commission said various High Courts had also unequivocally reiterated that, given the effective technical and administrative safeguards, the voting machines could not be tampered and integrity of the electoral process was fully preserved.
The Commission also clarified again that the EVMs are randomised by computer software twice once for allocation of machines to Assembly Constituencies and second to polling stations in the presence of candidates or their representatives before they are distributed for use in individual polling stations.
“Such lists of EVM containing serial number of EVM allocated to particular constituency and then to polling station are provided to the political parties/candidates. Once the candidate setting (also called preparation of EVMs) is done, the Ballot Unit of the EVM is also sealed with thread/pink paper seals so that nobody has access to the inside of the Ballot Unit too. These pink seals also bear signatures of representatives of political parties/candidate,” the Commission said.
The software of EVMs is developed in-house by a selected group of Engineers in BEl (Defense Ministry PSU) and ECIl (Atomic Energy Ministry’s PSU) independently from each other.
A select software development group of 2-3 engineers designs the source code and this work is not sub-contracted,” it said.