The EVM hacking theory is flawed for several reasons.
Let’s list them out:
AAP had won nearly 96 per cent of the seats in
the 2015 elections with precisely the same EVMs. Congress has since won 4
states using the same EVMs. If the machines were hacked, should re-elections be
done?
I was a candidate in the 2014 Lok Sabha
elections, and few days before the poll, scores of our volunteers were called
for ‘EVM checking’. They were allowed to select machines randomly and press
buttons multiple times to confirm that their votes were being registered
correctly. Some volunteers pressed an assortment of buttons across various
machines, and each time the result was correctly registered.
Of all the machines we tested, only one proved
to be faulty—when volunteers repeatedly pressed the button against my name, the
vote was transferred to a nondescript independent candidate. As soon as we
pointed this out, the officer promptly replaced the machine. That’s when I came
to understand the kind of rigid standards and care that was taken by the
independent EC to ensure that elections were fair.
Even if there happen to be a few faulty
machines, this does not amount to a case of massive rigging. Maybe some
machines might be sending that faulty vote to a BJP candidate. To discredit out
EC and democracy based on some faulty machines is undermining our country.
5 Machines are individual sets (like a calculator,
using its own algorithm) that cannot be influenced from outside, by wi-fi etc.
Therefore EVM cannot be mass influenced, nor changed without physical contact
with each individual machine.
During the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, 9,00,000
EVMs were being protected day and night by the Central Reserve Police Force
(CRPF), election officers and political workers across all parties. To suggest
that EVMs, despite being under such scrutiny, were having their motherboards
tampered with was unrealistic.
7 As a corollary, there were thirty-four lakh
permanent and temporary employees as part of the election exercise. It is
impossible to conceive of any party being able to arm-twist all of them into
ignoring physical manipulation of EVMs. India is a noisy, contradictory nation
and not a homogeneous political group and even a small group of 4/5 people
would have different political opinions. So, lakhs of people keeping quite or
complicit in this is not correct. Some whistle – blower could have exposed if
there was something hidden. Many retired Election Commissioners have been
anti-govt, but no one has made any such ridiculous claims.
8 In several constituencies across Punjab and Goa,
where AAP made allegations of the ruling party hacking EVMs, the maximum seats
went to the Congress. Did the BJP manipulate the results so the Congress could
win?
9 In many of the cases, opinion polls and
especially exit polls have been reasonably accurate. But opinion poll and exit
polls are not made on EVM, why do they match?
I had done some serious study of EVM and their
possible misuse in 2017. The results of
all the 1,642 polling stations in the 40 assembly seats of Goa as well as those
in 33 assembly seats in Punjab that had VVPAT (voter verified paper audit
trail)—an independent verification method in a ballot-less voting system which
allows voters to check that their vote has been cast correctly. Connected to
the EVM, the printer-like apparatus generates a receipt indicating the symbol
and name of the candidate a voter votes for. After being visible to the voter
from a glass case in the VVPAT for some seconds, the ballot slip is cut and
dropped into a drop box in the VVPAT machine and a beep is heard. VVPAT machines
can be accessed by polling officers only. The VVPAT rolls are taken out for
counting only if a candidate, his election agent or counting agent (in the
candidate’s absence) applies in writing to the returning officer (RO) to count
the printed paper slips in any or all the polling stations.
1 As per counting data of the 33 VVSAT
constituencies of Punjab, the Congress got the largest number of votes in 20
seats, followed by SAD (ShiromaniAkali Dal) and AAP which emerged victorious in
6 constituencies each. A lone seat went to the Lok Insaaf Party. This showed
little variation with results in other constituencies having EVMs without papertrail.
As we know, while the Congress emerged as the single largest party with 77
seats, AAP got 20 seats and SAD secured 15 seats.
. Neither
AAP’s candidates nor AAP itself approached the courts with their complaints,
which should have been the obvious course of action.
. When
the EC, to call the opposition’s bluff, scheduled an open hacking challenge for
EVMs, the opposition did not participate. Instead, it sought permission to physically
handle the EVM and change the internal circuitry of the machines, which was turned
down by the EC on grounds that it was ‘irrational and implausible’.
The hue and cry against EVM is just a drama. In my next
round, I shall write about who and why are some people trying to discredit EC.
