As the debate around the Electronic Voting Machine rages on, a Congress-led delegation on April 12 submitted a memorandum to President Pranab Mukherjee on the alleged irregularities in EVMs, reported from some parts of the country. But, senior Congress leader and former Union law minister M. Veerappa Moily, who was part of the delegation, said to THE WEEK that EVMs had been tested many times and there was no reason to be unduly concerned about EVMs at the moment. “But technology can go wrong at times. And it is the duty of the Election Commission to periodically monitor that EVMs are in proper condition.”
[File] M. Veerappa Moily | PTI
It was during Moily’s tenure as the law minister in 2004 that EVMs were introduced across the country in one go. Prior to that, ballot papers were used in some places. “Even in 2004, immediately after EVMs were introduced, there were problems in a few machines. The law ministry and the Election Commission had looked into it and had rectified it soon. It happens,” said Moily. “This is not a protest against EVMs as a whole. We are only raising certain questions. The Congress is not playing politics over it. The Election Commission should check EVMs and throw away the faulty ones. You see, I support technology in this case. But technology can go wrong at times. We need to realise it.”
Earlier, Moily had called the protests against EVMs by different parties a “defeatist mindset”.
EVMs were first introduced in 1982 in a byelection in Kerala. Run on a normal six-volt alkaline battery, a single EVM can record maximum of 3,840 votes. Controlled by a microprocessor, EVMs cannot be altered or replaced. Representatives of all parties are present when the seals of EVMs are opened before polling. In India, EVMs are manufactured by Bharat Electronics Limited and Electronics Corporation of India Limited. Indian-made EVMs were used by Nepal and Bhutan during elections in those countries.
A massive debate on EVMs began after the Bahujan Samaj Party’s president, Mayawati, accused the BJP of tampering with EVMs in the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. This, after the BJP registered a landslide victory in the state. The leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad, also alleged that EVMs were tampered with in UP. The BJP has dismissed these allegations. Later, Delhi’s chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, alleged that EVMs brought for the municipal polls in Delhi didn’t have security features. “The Election Commission is hellbent on using old EVMs despite the newer versions being available. So the Election Commission is involved in the EVM fraud,” said Kejriwal. Last week, the Madhya Pradesh unit of the Congress had asked for use of paper ballot in a byelection slated in the state for next month after a EVM wrongly functioned during a media demonstration by the state election commission.
