Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has blamed its humiliating defeat in the recently held Uttar Pradesh polls on Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and the AAP national convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal too alleged that that 20-25 per cent of AAP’s votes were transferred to SAD through tampered EVMs in Punjab.
This is not a new phenomenon. Almost all political parties have blamed their electoral defeat on EVMs at some point or another. Yet EVMs have survived the test of time and have the faith of the Indian public.
There can be no doubt that EVMs are fully trustworthy and cannot be tampered. Election Commission of India (ECI) has given a detailed reply to BSP stating that there is no merit in its complaint. The letter is available on the ECI website.
let us first have a quick look at the history of EVMs in India. A prototype EVM was demonstrated to S.l. Shakdhar, the then Chief Election Commissioner in December, 1977 by Electronics Corporation of India limited, Hyderabad (ECIl).
In January 1981 Bharat Electronics limited, Bangalore (BEl) also approached the Commission for manufacturing of EVMs. The Commission held a meeting with the representatives of the BEl, ECIl, Ministry of law and Chief Electoral Officers of some states on July 29, 1981 on this issue and introduced Electronic Voting Machines for the first time in 50 polling stations in polling held on May 19, 1982 in 70-Parur Assembly Constituency as an experimental measure.
Subsequently the Commission used EVMs in 10 other Assembly Constituencies on experimental basis, in different states in 1982-83. EVMs were used in these elections without any provision in law on the basis of executive instructions issued by ECI. Supreme Court of India vide its judgment dated 5th March 1984 in EP No.01 of 1982 filed by A.C. Jose relating to the first use of EVMs in Kerala, held that EVMs cannot be used in an election unless a specific provision is made in the law providing for their use.
The law was amended by the Parliament in December, 1988 and a new section 61A was inserted in the Representation of the People Act, 1951 empowering the Commission to use voting machines. The amended provision came into force w.e.f. 15 th March, 1989. The Supreme Court has upheld the validity of Section 61A by its judgment dated 23-04- 2001 (2002 UJ (1) 387). In January 1990 the Electoral Reforms Committee (Dinesh Goswami Committee), appointed by the Central Government and consisting of representative of several recognized National and State Parties constituted a Technical Experts Committee
under the chairmanship of Professor S. Sampath, Chairman Technical Advisory Committee, Defense Research & Development Organization, Ministry of Defense, and consisting of Professor P V Indiresan of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and Dr. Rao C. Kasarbada, Director, ER&DC, Trivandrum for the evaluation of the Electronic Voting Machines.
The Expert Committee, therefore, unanimously recommended in April, 1990 use of the electronic voting machines without further loss of time. Thereafter, necessary amendments in the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961 were notified by the Government with regard to the use of EVMs in elections on 24 th March, 1992.
ECI gradually increased the use of EVMs in elections. EVMs are now universally used in all elections to lok Sabha and state Vidhan Sabhas conducted by ECI in India and also in most of the local body elections conducted by State Election Commissions.
Simple, Effective, Fast and Free from Fraud The use of EVMs has simplified the complex electoral process in India. During the days of paper ballot there were often complaints of booth capturing. New generation may not remember but people of our generation would not forget the images of policemen stamping ballot papers in Meham. Counting of votes took several days.
Many ballots were found to be marked for several candidates and here was also the problem of the unmarked ballots. The returning officer had to decide about all the doubtful votes and many a times the losing candidate was dissatisfied about the outcome.
With EVMs booth capturing is no longer possible because not more than 100 votes can be cast into the EVM in one hour. The problem of multiple marking and non-marking of ballots has also been solved. Counting has become very easy and results are known within 2-3 hours of the beginning of counting. It is not an overstatement that EVM the wonder machine has revolutionized electoral processes in India.
The EVMs used in India are fully indigenous and have strong technical security. These features include a One Time Programmable/Masked chip which cannot be altered or tampered with; completely stand alone machine with no possibility of remote connections; dynamic coding between Ballot Unit and Control Unit; real time clock on board the chip; full display system and date and time stamping of every key press. These security features have made the EVMs fully tamper proof. The ECI has continued and expanded the Technical Experts Committee which has examined and improved the technical security in EVMs from time to time.
In addition to the technical security there are several administrative safeguards which ensure the reliability of EVMs. These include the First level Check of EVMs conducted in the presence of political party representatives before every election; distribution of EVMs to constituencies and polling stations after randomization by a computer software; 12 different types of seals applied to the EVMs in the presence of political party representatives and candidates; mock poll conducted on each EVM on the poll day before the actual poll; secure storage in strong rooms with continuous CCTV coverage; re-sealing and secure storage for 45 days after the poll and in case of an election petition till the final disposal of the petition by the competent court so that the EVM is available for recount on the orders of the court; and complete transparency with full involvement of political parties and candidates at every stage.
These administrative measures along with the technical features ensure complete security of EVMs in India.
Early doubters of EVMs were in fact people who wanted to sell their own version of EVMs to ECI. In 1980 Mohammad Haneefa of Tamil Nadu approached the Commission with his own invention of Electronic Voting Machine. When the Commission decided to procure EVMs form Public Sector Companies, Mohammad Haneefa filed a writ petition before Madras High Court which was dismissed by the Court.
On 1st April 2005 Krishna Institute of Engineering and Technology Ghaziabad made a demonstration of the prototype of a finger print based EVM. However, this was not found to be useful. On 28-01- 2006 S Balasubramanian wrote to the Commission that he had developed a hi-tech voting machine. In January 2006 Ashish Anand wrote to the Commission that he had developed several post EVM electoral enhancements. On 20-04- 2006 he told the Commission that he had developed a system of remote voting and he was willing to dedicate his patent to ECIl and BEl for domestic purposes.
Soon after the loksabha Election, 2009, there was an upsurge in questions raised about EVMs. Jan Chaitanya Vedika, an NGO in Andhra Pradesh, went round several districts of Andhra Pradesh in 2009, making public demonstrations on fake look alike EVMs, challenging the ECI-EVMs. Several persons including Omesh Saigal ex-Chief Secretary of Delhi, Kirit Somaiya and Vijay Mukhi of the BJP, Satinath Choudhary, V V Rao, Hariprasad of Net India, G K Mani President PMK, Devasahayam retired IAS officer and Vijayendra Gupta. In response to this, the Commission even made an open offer for 10 days for any person to walk into the Commission Headquarter and demonstrate tampering of ECI EVMs. Some of the above made some demonstrations on laptop computers and on EVM like machines developed by them but none could demonstrate any tampering of ECI EVMs.
It is interesting that though there was hardly any public support to the opposition of EVMs in India, a lot of hue and cry was made in foreign media. One David Dill of Stanford University made a TV demonstration on some trumped up machine, there were public interviews on foreign TV channels by one Rop Gonggrijp of the Netherlands, anti-EVM seminars were held in the USA which were attended by some people from India as well. The response of the ECI was complete transparency and open discussion. As a
result this gossip against the EVMs soon died out.
Most political parties have spoken against EVMs when they have suffered massive electoral defeats. These include National parties like the Congress, the BJP and now the BSP and state parties like the TDP, TRS etc. It is interesting that the same parties forget their opposition to EVMs when they win in an election.
BJP was the most vocal critic of EVMs before the 2014 General Elections. However after its massive win in the polls, BJP forgot all about EVM opposition. EVM bashing has become a convenient method of explaining electoral defeats to their critics by political parties.
These political parties would do well to look inwards for the reasons of their defeat and stop blaming the EVMs. let us also not forget permission to use EVMs was given by the Parliament by making necessary amendments in the law and if political parties in India really do not have faith in EVMs they only need to amend the law once again and remove the provision for using EVMs. That it has not been done is testimony that Indian political establishment understands that EVMs are tamper proof and makes these noises only to placate its critics.
Indian judiciary has always upheld the use of EVMs in elections. The functioning of the ECI-EVMs was questioned for the first time before the Bombay High Court (Nagpur Bench) and Karnataka High Court in two election petitions [EP No. 29/1999and EP No. 1/2004 respectively]. Both the High Courts were satisfied that ECI-EVMs are tamper proof after detailed examination of technical witnesses and experts. The Karnataka High Court went to the extent of observing “this (ECI-EVM)invention is undoubtedly a great achievement in the electronic and computer technology and a national pride”.
The Kerala High Court has also recorded in EP No.4/2001, its appreciation of the efficiency of the mechanism of the ECI-EVMs. The Madras High Court held in April 2001 in WP Nos. 3346, 3633 etc. of 2001, that: “There is also no question of introducing any virus or bugs for the reason that the EVMs cannot be compared to Personal Computers. The programming in computers, as suggested, has no bearing with the EVMs. The computer would have inherent limitations having connections through Internet and by their very design, they may allow the alteration of the programmes but the EVMs are independent units and the programme in EVM is entirely a different system.”
It has further observed “The contention of the learned counsel that the use of EVMs in Japan and United States of America proved to be a failure also will not hold any water. In India, we are not following the system prevailing in the United States of America or Japan”.
Ex law Minister of India Subramanian Swamy filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the use of EVMs. During the course of hearing of this petition it was suggested that a VVPAT be implemented in EVMs to allay any doubts about tampering. Both BEl and ECIl rose to the occasion and developed a VVPAT in consultation with the technical experts committee. The VVPAT has now been used in several elections. The fact that the vote count of EVM does not differ from the vote count of VVPAT has once again shown to the world that Indian EVMs are fully trustworthy.
Electronic Voting Machines are loved by the electorate in India. They are here to stay. Political parties will do well to remember that success of democracy depends on trust of the people in electoral process. They should find the causes of electoral defeat in their programmes and performance rather than blame it on EVMs.
(The writer is a senior IAS officer in Chhattisgarh who served as India’s Deputy Election Commissioner for several years in Delhi.)