Chorus against EVMs grows, poll panel says they are tamperproof

New Delhi, July 5 : Several leaders from across the political spectrum Sunday echoed Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader L.K. Advani's criticism of electronic voting machines, but the Election Commission maintained the EVMs are tamper-proof and reliable.

With rival parties like Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) and Communist Party of India-Marxists (CPI-M) raising the pitch against the EVMs' credibility, the ruling Congress with the Election Commission of India was forced to speak up for the maligned machine.

Advani told The Sunday Express that ballot papers should be reintroduced in the state assembly elections scheduled later this year.

'We should revert to ballot papers unless the Election Commission is able to ensure that electronic voting machines (EVMs) are foolproof and every possibility of their malfunctioning is taken care of,' Advani was quoted as saying.

The Election Commission responded in a statement, asserting that the EVMs' functional authenticity and trustworthiness have been ratified not only by technical experts but also by the judiciary.

It said that the EVMs' credibility has been endorsed in several judicial verdicts, including one by the Supreme Court and four by the high courts of Mumbai, Kerala, Chennai and Karnataka, which termed the EVM as a national pride.

The Election Commission said at the behest of a parliamentary panel, the EVMs' reliablity had been examined way back in 1990 by a committee of technical experts.

The poll panel also reacted partly to a communication from former Delhi chief secretary Omesh Saigal, an IIT engineer by training.

'It is possible to create a software to enable an EVM to allocate its every fifth vote to a particular candidate,' Saigal wrote June 30 to the poll panel, demanding regular public audit of the machines.

The commission pointed out that it deploys EVMs after rigorous checks by technicians in presence of representatives political parties and said it would take additional measures to boost public confidence.

Congress party spokesperson Manish Tiwari described Advani's contention as a 'stretch of imagination'.

'The concerns (about malfunctioning of EVMs) have been expressed over a period of time, but to go that far as to suggest that you should scrap EVMs and revert to voting by ballot, I think, is a stretch of imagination,' Tiwari told a news channel.

Advani's comments came some 20 days after Lok Janashakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan raised a similar question. 'EVMs have become a political tool to rig the election,' the LJP leader and former central minister had said last month.

He reiterated his views after Advani's remarks.

'If the electronic device to count the votes of 543 members in the Lok Sabha cannot be trusted, how can you trust the electronic voting machines for a voting process involving millions of electorate all over the country?' Paswan asked while talking to IANS.

The LJP passed a resolution questioning the credibility of EVMs at its national executive meet June 14, convened to analyse its poll debacle in the latest 2009 general elections. The party, which had won four Lok Sabha seats in 2004 general elections, failed to win even a single seat this time.

Paswan, who in the past always won from Hajipur in Bihar with record margins, was defeated.

He said his party had encountered complaints against EVMs, ranging from their malfunctioning to their manipulation by the state government and presiding officers. In some cases, officials cast the votes while demonstrating the use of these machines to gullible villagers, he alleged.

RJD leader and former Bihar chief minister Rabri Devi said: 'They are foreign machines. They should be sent abroad and must not be used here in India. Our old seal and ballot papers were good enough.'

Former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda of JD-S also said EVMs 'should be abandoned'.

CPI-M leaders Prakash Karat and Brinda Karat also expressed concern over the machines' reliability.

Meanwhile, BJP spokesperson Sidharth Nath Singh clarified his party's stand on the matter. 'Advani has not referred to the 2009 elections being rigged. What he has said (about reverting to ballot papers) is because there have been a large number of complaints on the issue of malfunctioning of EVMs,' he said.