EVMs pass the test

IN a recent ruling, the Supreme Court dismissed demands for 100 per cent verification of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips and rejected all the other pleas of the petitioners, including one which wanted to take the country back to paper ballot system. Most importantly, the SC reinforced the credibility of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).

After conducting a detailed review of the administrative and technical safeguards of EVMs, the court concluded that EVMs were “simple”, “secure” and “user friendly.”

Both the judges on the Bench – Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta – were unequivocal in their rejection of all three pleas. They also warned that “blindly distrusting any aspect of the system can breed unwarranted scepticism and impede progress”.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has hailed the verdict as “a tight slap on the face of the Opposition”. With the Supreme Court summarily dismissing the idea of reverting to the ballot papers, the controversial debate over the efficacy of EVMs must end now. In the midst of General Elections, it is important to refrain from floating new conspiracy theories surrounding voting machines. The apex court has made it unequivocally clear that the Election Commission, the sole authority to conduct polls, has clarified all technical doubts in this regard. The court also rejected the plea seeking complete verification of votes cast using EVMs with VVPAT slips and refused to issue mandamus based on mere suspicions in some sections. During the hearing, the poll panel clarified, to the satisfaction of the court, several technical questions raised by the petitioners. The EC asserted that it was impossible to tamper with the EVMs at any stage. All three units of an EVM – ballot unit, VVPAT and the chip – have their own microcontrollers, which are one-time programmable and cannot be hacked. The Election Commission has done everything possible to convince political parties, voters and civil society about the efficacy of the voting machines. The EVMs have withstood repeated judicial and technocratic challenges ever since they were introduced. The Voter Verification Paper Trail (VVPAT) was introduced by the poll panel in 2013 precisely for the purpose of dispelling apprehensions about the functioning of EVMs and the EC used to tally only one random EVM per Assembly segment with VVPAT. In April 2019, when 21 Opposition parties wanted 50 pc verification, the apex court raised this number from 1 to 5.

This is not the first time that the court has declined to interfere with the system in place. It had earlier refused to order 50 pc verification of the paper trail in one case and 100 pc in another. The court has utilised this petition to review the administrative and technical safeguards in the system and found nothing to impair its faith in it. Doubting Thomases are still not satisfied and are rooting for going back to the ballot paper system in the name of confidencebuilding. It is a regressive idea to revert to ballot papers when the EVMs have proved their trustworthiness over decades and helped in preventing electoral malpractices, like rigging and booth-capturing. As the latest verdict pointed out, the weaknesses of the ballot paper system are well known and documented. “We would be undoing the electoral reforms by directing reintroduction of the ballot papers,” it said.