2024 LS polls: Digvijaya Singh makes a clarion call to do away with EVMs

He called upon a select gathering comprising farmers, lawyers, students, youth, and other organisations, to gear up for a virtual war against EVMs which he claimed to have put the very future of electoral democracy at stake. He also cited several anomalies related to EVMs during the recently concluded Madhya Pradesh Assembly polls, besides four other states. Singh said that he had sought time from the Election Commission (EC) to raise and discuss issues that created doubts about EVMs, but the Commission has not given him the opportunity.

EVM Hataao Morcha

Nearly 200 people from diverse sections gathered to listen to him last weekend on the lawns of North Avenue MPs flats in the national capital. Those gathered decided to form a broad-based front of political, social and professionals’ outfits to create awareness about “abuse of electoral process through EVMs”. The name suggested for the front is EVM Hataao Morcha (Remove EVMs).

After about three hours of deliberations, it was decided that former Lok Sabha member and Congress leader Dr Uditraj would be convener of the proposed front. The Morcha will be put together and function under the watch, instructions and guidance of Singh.

Several people who spoke at Saturday’s meeting shared their experiences about voting through EVMs in successive polls held during recent years in several parts of the country. The main point that quite a few speakers stressed upon was that the results of polls held through EVMs did not often match with the ground realities in several constituencies. This has been so, as per them, amid doubt about EVM chips and codes.

INDIA alliance likely to discuss EVM issue

Thus, Singh suggested either doing away with EVMs and returning to old and more trusted ballot papers or the paper trail displayed on VVPATs be given to the voter so as to be put by him or her in a separate box. These paper slips should be counted and matched with EVM’s counting unit before the declaration of results. “This should be made a must to make the electoral process transparent and unimpeachable,” he remarked.

Uditraj warned the poorer sections of society about the possibility of them being robbed of their basic right to fight and overcome poverty and discrimination amid the use of EVMs. “These machines have made the electoral process opaque and unreliable under a plan to favour moneyed sections of the society who are inimical to the interests of the poor and marginalised sections like Dalits, backwards and minorities. So the sooner the EVMs are done away with, the better. Any machine can be fiddled around, doctored or tampered with and so is the EVM,” he argued.

Significantly, Saturday’s meeting has come only a few days before the proposed meeting of INDIA coalition parties on December 19 at New Delhi’s Ashoka Hotel. This is going to be the fourth meeting of the leaders of the Opposition alliance where there is a strong possibility of the role of EVMs in polls being discussed by the participants.

What EC had said about EVM tampering

Earlier, or in March this year to be precise, quite a few Opposition parties’ leaders had met at the New Delhi residence of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) supremo Sharad Pawar to discuss the possible abuse of EVMs to manipulate poll outcomes. The leaders gathered at Pawar’s house had expressed strong reservations regarding EVMs' role in polls. They had resolved to take up the issue with the Election Commission which has been discounting any possibility of hacking or tampering of EVM and has called it a standalone and unbreakable instrument of voting.

In 2017 the Commission had thrown open the challenge to the parties having reservations about the machines to hack them. But those who posed the challenge lament ever since that the Election Commissioners put them at a distance from the machine and never allowed them to touch it, making it impossible for them to prove their point.

The issue of EVMs had also reached the Supreme Court which ordered its authentication through the counting of a part of VVPATs paper trail. But the skeptics have been unconvinced and have demanded a hundred percent count of the paper trail.

Meanwhile, an advocate, Narendra Mishra, who hails from Madhya Pradesh and practises in the Supreme Court, has moved for a publicly approved audit of EVMs before the Chief Justice of India. Mishra did so after voting in his home State on November 17. His petition is yet to be heard by the top court even as the court has sought a response from the electoral body to the points raised by the petitioner.