EVM- Is there accountability
Vicky Nanjappa
Accountability of the vote that a citizen polls became a matter of debate in the 2009 elections. This time too that is likely to be an issue since the much needed voter verified paper audit trail or the VVPAT will not be seen in a majority of the constituencies. Despite a Supreme Court ruling in a ruling given last year had directed the Election Commission of India to introduce VVPAT for the 2014 elections. It also observed that VVPAT is indispensable for free and fair elections.
While both the Election Commission of India and the Government of India made all the right noises, the fact is that it has not been implemented.
The ECI says that it would be done only by 2019. What brought about this delay? Activists from Save India Democracy who had exposed the frauds being committed through EVM’s point out that it is due to a blame game that the VVPAT was not introduced and more importantly the government has not yet sanctioned the required Rs 1860 crore to the ECI which is required for this project.
What is VVPAT?
VVPAT provides a feedback to the voter using the EVM. Basically it is a print out of the vote that a person has cast. It allows an independent verification system for electronic voting machines that allows voters to verify that their votes are cast as intended and can serve as an additional barrier to changing or destroying votes.
In order to implement VVPAT, the Election Commission had to ensure that the existing EVM’s were connected to a printer. When a vote is caste, a receipt is printed which shows the serial number, name and symbol of the candidate. It confirms the vote and the voter can verify the details. The receipt, once viewed, goes inside a container linked to the EVM and can only be accessed by the election officers in rarest of rare cases. It was decided to implement this system after allegations of EVM tampering in the previous elections where it was found that some of the votes cast to a particular candidate by a voter were polled to another. The chip inside the EVM was allegedly tampered with in some constituencies to suit some parties and the biggest allegation was made in the case of the elections in Andhra Pradesh.
After a lot of deliberation and debate the proposal to introduce VVPAT was finallycleared in February 2013. The government of India too amended the Conduct of Election Rules which enabled the commission to use VVPAT with the EVM’s.
The ECI then pointed out that in order to introduce the VVPAT system in 543 constituencies, it would need 14 lakh machines. However the ECI had apprehensions and stated that in such a short span of time it would not be possible to manufacture so many machines and also have them tested. Hence this would be a possibility only by 2019, the ECI contended.
G V L Rao who was part of the team which exposed the frauds committed through EVM’s tells rediff.com that the bigger issue was that the government dragged its feet on sanctioning funds for the introduction of VVPATdespite the Supreme Court passing its order one year back. The ECI could not proceed further without these funds.
Rao says that since 5 years they have been fighting to make the entire voting process transparent. To begin with every EVM needs to be kept in a secure environment so that it is cannot be tampered with. However what we had found is that these machines were dumped in an open yard which made it vulnerable to tampering. As a result of dumping these machines in the open, many had gone missing and the ECI has not yet revealed these details to us.
Rao says that the most important part of this machine is the chip which contains the source code. We suggested was that since these machines were kept in the open, it would be advisable to at least change the chip. These chips cost not more than Rs 100 each.
The other suggestion that we made and was not taken was regarding the maintenance of the machines. These machines are manufactured by Bharat Electronics Limited and Electronics Corporation of India. These companies send engineers to carry out a maintenance check or a first level check.
Shockingly these are not employees of the above mentioned two companies. They are agents hired on a contract basis and they conduct the inspection of these machines before the elections. We suggested that that the job of the first level check be given to the National Informatics Centre so that the person doing the job has accountability. We had pointed out that some of these persons who were hired to conduct this check belonged to software companies that were being run by politicians. The chances of tampering is higher in such cases. However the ECI did not agree with us, Rao says.
The problem is that there is a leap of blind faith in technology and the ECI blindly trusts everything that the manufacturer does.We have always pointed out that elections cannot be based on trust. It is necessary to ensure safeguards and more importantly the ECI should have implemented VVPAT by now. It took them almost four years to acknowledge that EVMs could be hacked. When a person votes there ought to be a valid receipt of the same, just the way one would get a statement when cash is drawn out of an ATM. Without a valid record one cannot go back and check in case there is a problem.