Digvijaya Singh again questions credibility of EVMs, wants VVPAT slips counted

Congress leader Digvijaya Singh on Wednesday questioned the reliability of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and said VVPAT (Voter verifiable paper audit trail) slips must be handed over to voters and dropped inside a ballot box.

Election results should be declared by counting these slips only, asserted the Rajya Sabha member at a press conference at his residence in Bhopal.

Only 5 countries

The veteran politician said EVMs were now used only in India, Australia, Nigeria, Venezuela and Brazil. The software used in Australia was in the public domain and anyone can access it, he said.

“But in India it is not, and the Election Commission is not putting it (the software) in the public domain on the grounds that it can be hacked,” he told the media.

At the press conference, he demonstrated how the VVPAT machine was not recording proper votes.

Digvijaya’s doubts

Singh has questioned the reliability of the EVMs on more than one occasion following the Congress defeat in Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.

“If conducting elections through ballot papers is not possible, then Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips should be handed over to voters and they, after verifying it, should be allowed to drop it into the ballot box,” he said.

VVPAT slips

The Congress leader demanded that election results be declared by counting these VVPAT slips and not through the EVMs which record the votes polled by the different candidates.

Singh and a Gujarat-based computer engineer, Atul Patel demonstrated of how VVPAT records votes.

If the button is pressed for a longer period, it records multiple votes and not to the symbol that people have actually voted for, they claimed.

Demonstrates mischief

During the “demonstration”, 10 votes were cast in favour of imaginary symbols like Banana, Apple and Watermelon. While Banana polled four votes, Apple got five and Watermelon got one, they said.

However, when the slips were counted Apple got eight votes, Banana three and Watermelon one. This proved that the machine was not recording proper votes, Patel said.

“Votes polled for Banana were transferred to Apple as the machine was programmed to ensure victory of Apple,” he claimed.

Dark cover

He said that earlier the glass over the VVPAT machine was transparent, but after 2017, it was made dark and this raises doubt over its authenticity.

Singh claimed that many questions were raised through Right to Information (RTI) applications over the reliability of the EVMs but “no satisfactory answers were given”.

He also demanded that a petition pending on the issue of EVMs in the Supreme Court be handed over to the full bench to decide the matter.

Selective mischief?

When asked by reporters how the Congress won elections in Karnataka and other states if EVMs were hacked, Singh said “they (BJP government) are doing it selectively so that no doubts are raised about it”.

The BJP does what it wants in states where its victory is possible and not in places like Kerala and Tamil Nadu where they are not sure about the party’s prospects of coming to power, he said.

BJP counter

Meanwhile, BJP spokesman Narendra Saluja countered his allegations saying that by doubting the EVM, Singh was raising questions over the victory of the Congress in Karnataka, Telangana and elsewhere. And also his own son's victory in the recent Madhya Pradesh assembly elections.

Pankaj Chaturvedi, another BJP spokesman, said the Congress had started searching for excuses for its “certain defeat” in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

(With agency inputs)