Won’t go back to era of ballot papers, says Sunil Arora Amid call for conducting 2019 Lok Sabha elections through ballot papers, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Sunil Arora on Thursday made it clear that the Election Commission (EC) is not going back to the era of ballot papers.
The CEC said political parties are the biggest stakeholders in democracy, but there is no way the country will be “intimidated, bullied or coerced” into giving up electronic voting machines (EVMs).
“It is very unfortunate. We have had different results in various elections since 2014. If result is x then EVMs are fine, if not then EVMs are faulty. EVMs are not a football,” Arora lamented.
The CEC made the remarks at an international conference on “Making our Elections Inclusive & Accessible” ahead of National Voters Day on Friday. His remarks came days after in the wake of an alleged EVM hackathon event in London, where a self-proclaimed US-based cyber expert made wild allegations with regard to the possibility of hacking EVMs. Most of these claims have already fallen flat.
“However, I would like to make it very, very clear once more. In fact, it is not I, it is the entire ECI, it is the ECIs of the past, and it will be the ECIs of the future... We are not going back to the era of ballot papers,” Arora said. “We are not going back to that era where we have ballot papers being lifted, musclemen being employed besides the delay in the counting and also too much harassment of polling staff on the ground,” he added.
The poll panel chief added that EVMs were being used in India for more than 20 years and that voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) was also introduced.
“We are open to any criticism, any feedback from any stakeholders, including political parties, because they are the biggest stakeholders. But at the same time, we are not going to be intimidated or bullied or coerced into giving up these and returning to the era of ballot boxes,” he said.
Earlier, the EC had approached the Delhi Police seeking probe against Syed Shuja, self-proclaimed US-based cyber expert who claimed EVMs were tampered with in 2014 parliamentary polls. Shuja made the claim at a Press conference held in London on Monday via video-conferencing. The Delhi Police has file an FIR against Shuja.
Following his claims, several Opposition parties have demanded the use of ballot papers in the coming Lok Sabha polls. CEC Arora pointed out that EVMs and paper trail machines are manufactured under highly secured conditions by two PSUs -- Bharat Electronics Ltd and Electronics Corporation of India Ltd -- who are doing a lot of work for defence establishments.
Defending EVMs, the CEC said there was one result in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and a totally different result four months later in the Delhi State elections. “Since then, we have had elections in Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Tripura, Nagaland , Mizoram, and now Chattisgarh, MP, Telangana, Rajasthan... The results have been completely different in different times... My simple question is that if the result is X, the EVM is right and the result turns out to be Y, the EVM is faulted,” he said.
In the recent Assembly elections in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram and Telangana, a total of six incidents were reported.
“I am repeating, six anecdotal or real incidents out of 1,76,000 polling booths. I am not defending those incidents. There were some lapses on those EVMs, that were not even used for the elections by the cutting edge staff. Actions were taken very swiftly, and they met their nemesis in 24 to 48 hours. However, we are not happy even with those six incidents. In elections, we should have zero tolerance for any incident of such nature,” he said. Following Shuja’s Press conference, BSP chief Mayawati had asked the Election Commission to revert to ballot papers in 2019 Lok Sabha elections to ensure free and fair polls. Her new ally, Akhilesh Yadav, the SP president, too echoed the sentiment saying that reliability of the EVMs had come under the question.
The Congress also sought clarification from the Election Commission over the claims made by Shuja. However, the BJP and the JD(U) backed continued use of the EVMs in elections.