Poll panel chief says EVMs are foolproof, foil malpractice

Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) are foolproof and have brought in "revolutionary changes" in the poll process, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) O P Rawat said today.

Rawat's statement comes amid an ongoing debate over the use of EVMs with some political parties questioning the reliability of the device and suggesting a return to the old ballot paper system.

The CEC said India's EVM technology has been praised by countries such as Australia.

"EVMs were successful in bringing revolutionary changes in the election process. They are foolproof," Rawat said, adding that the use of EVMs prevented booth capturing.

The poll panel chief was talking to reporters here after the launch of "Mediawala", a news website.

"Recently, when I went to Australia to take part in an election conference, people there expressed unhappiness with the ballot system.

"They asked us, how we managed to announce poll results in a single day and wanted to see EVMs. You get results soon and even Australia praised it," he said.

The EVMs eliminate the possibility of bogus voting, the retired IAS officer said.

"It takes 20 seconds for a machine to record a vote. If you want to poll 1,000 votes then you require at least five hours to do so. Therefore it is not possible for anyone to do bogus voting. It deals with electoral malpractice such as booth capturing in an effective way," the CEC said.

Highlighting the benefits of EVMs, Rawat said they required minimal human interface and did not need power connections to operate.

Moreover, under the earlier system, ballot papers of a large number of voters were invalidated because of various reasons, the CEC maintained.

"There were crores of voters in the country, who did not know how to vote under the older system. This used to tarnish the image of people, but EVMs prevent this," he said.

"It is a foolproof system and if we discard it for the old one, it will not be easy to conduct polls. It rules out human errors as it is a machine," he said.

Rawat added that monitoring of sensitive booths through web-cameras helped in preventing bogus voting.

The CEC said those criticising EVMs were doing so for their own interests.

When people lose elections, they blame their defeat on EVMs, but when they win they don't do so, he added.

On the issue of conducting simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state Assemblies, he said this could be done if necessary amendments were made to the Constitution and there were enough EVMs.

Other factors such as logistical support and availability of security forces also had to be considered, Rawat said, adding that simultaneous polls would drastically reduce electoral expenses.

"The government had sought the Election Commission's opinion in 2015 on holding elections to the Lok Sabha and legislative Assemblies together.

"We had sent a detailed reply to the government, telling them that the new system would require amendments in the relevant paragraphs of the Constitution and certain sections of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, and the Representation of the People Act, 1951," Rawat said.

Joint elections would reduce poll expenses by up to 70 per cent, the CEC maintained.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had recently urged NDA constituents to start a debate on the need for "One Nation, One Election".

To a question, he said the EC has installed software to weed out duplicate names from the electoral rolls.

Asked if it was possible to delay the coming Assembly polls and conduct them along with the Lok Sabha elections, as was being talked about in political circles, Rawat said, "It can't be done in the present circumstances."