Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday alleged ‘widespread tampering’ of electronic voting machines and claimed voter-verified paper audit trail machines from Uttar Pradesh were being brought to conduct the Rajouri Garden bypoll in New Delhi.
The Election Commission, however, termed the allegations ‘baseless’.
Kejriwal demanded that the municipal election in Delhi should be ‘postponed’ so that it can be held using ballot papers.
On the EC asking the Aam Aadmi Party to ‘introspect’ on the reasons behind its performance in Punjab, Kejriwal’s caustic response was that he was considering including the EC in his party’s decision-making body, the Political Affairs Committee.
The State Election Commission has already declared that the municipal polls will be held on April 23.
He has also written to the EC claiming that ‘our experts’ will prove that the voting machines can be tampered with. “I challenge the ECI to give us 72 hours to prove it,” Kejriwal said.
The AAP chief said in light of reports that even VVPAT machines were not reliable, ballot papers were the ‘only safe option’, which, he said, has been adopted by many western countries.
“The microchips inside the EVMs can be fiddled with. Sophisticated software is being used to do that. But not all machines are tampered, the critical ones are,” Kejriwal claimed without elaborating further.
He also questioned the EC for using EVMs used in Uttar Pradesh’s Govind Nagar for conducting bypolls in Madhya Pradesh’s Bhind.
At Bhind, VVPAT-enabled EVMs were found printing the Bharatiya Janata Party’s poll symbol irrespective of the button pressed during a mock trial, which the opposition parties had latched on to.
Rubbishing his allegations, the EC said the EVMs are kept in a strong room after results are announced till the 45-day period of filing of election petition by any of the candidates is over.
However, in case of VVPAT machines, the printed paper slips have to be retrieved at the time of counting and sealed in a paper envelope and only these sealed paper slips have to be kept inside the strong room along with the EVMs.
The voters see VVPAT slip for seven seconds, which would be an acknowledgement receipt for the party they voted for in the election.
VVPAT is a machine which dispenses a slip with the symbol of the party for which a person has voted for. The slip drops in a box but the voter cannot take it home.
‘The VVPAT machines are not required by the law to be retained in strong room for the purpose of election petition and are available for use in any other election,’ the EC said in a statement.
The Commission, without naming Kejriwal, described him as leader of a political party who had made ‘certain baseless observations and allegations’ in a press conference.
‘Aspersions have also been cast on the Election Commission of India that EVMs from Uttar Pradesh were moved to Bhind, Madhya Pradesh. The Commission would like to point out that these allegations are completely baseless and made without verifying the facts. No EVMs have been moved from Uttar Pradesh for the purpose of bypolls in Madhya Pradesh.
‘Required number of VVPAT machines was moved from different states for use in bypolls as per the existing policy of the ECI. This is because 53,500 VVPAT machines available with the commission were deployed during the recently concluded polls in five states,’ it said.
The poll watchdog said that in any election a certain percentage of EVMs and VVPAT machines are kept in reserve so that the machines deployed on the poll day can be replaced, if required.
‘The EVMs and VVPATs kept in reserve also go through the stringent protocol of ‘first level checking’, randomisation and loading of symbols in the presence of representatives of candidates/political parties. Hence, the VVPATs that were sent to Bhind had the previous symbols loaded from Uttar Pradesh.
‘This is a standard protocol and there was nothing amiss in this. According to standard protocol, the old symbols are erased only during first level checking before the next poll. However, it was not done when the demonstration was made on March 31 at Bhind. As per the Commission’s instructions, any training or demonstration is commenced only after completing the first level checking which was missed out at Bhind for which Commission has replaced the District Election Officer,’ it said.
IMAGE: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Deputy Cm Manish Sisodia addressing a press conference in New Delhi on Monday. Photograph: @AamAadmiParty/Twitter
