‘EVMs not reliable, voting should be done via ballot paper only’Says EVM Hatao Sena and Right to Recall Party

Awasthi.

Varanasi, 30 April (HS): Regarding EVM (Electronic Voting Machine), the top court of the country may have bluntly said that these days the Election Commission is conducting the Lok Sabha elections in India with complete fairness and accepted that tampering with EVMs and VVPATs is not possible. Supreme Court rejects challenge to opposition parties to hack EVMs. Despite this, EVM Hatao Sena and Right to Recall Party claim that EVMs are not reliable and voting should be done through ballot paper only. Pawan Kumar Sharma of Right to Recall Party from Bhilwara, Rajasthan demonstrated an electronic voting machine in a press conference held at Paradkar Bhawan in Golghar on Tuesday.

During the demonstration, on pressing the button on the banana symbol twice in a row, the black glass VVPAT was activated both times. Only banana was visible in the machine but inside the printer, one slip was printed for banana and the other for apple. He claimed that this machine has been made by Rahul Chimanbhai Mehta, an engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and a resident of Ahmedabad who has obtained a postgraduate degree from America. “He is associated with our organization. This machine shows that if anyone wants, E.V.M. can easily steal votes. If another voter also votes for banana, he too will be sent VVPAT for 7 seconds. The banana slip of the first voter will be visible, but when the lights go off, the printer will print the apple before the arrival of the third voter. Neither the voter nor any official present there will know about this. Officers also use VVPAT with black glass,” he said. Pawan told reporters that the only purpose of this demonstration is to bust the myth propagated by Election Commission of India to prove EVM machines being error free. However, we are proving them wrong. The Supreme Court has justified the elections since then and has rejected outrightly the suggestion of going back to the ballot option. The possibility that there could be manipulation behind the black glass was not even considered. He said that there is deep dissatisfaction towards EVMs, both the Right to Recall Party and the Socialist Party (India) believe that E.V.M can be manipulated. The right option is to conduct elections through ballot instead. In which the error can at least be caught on camera.

In the election of Mayor of Chandigarh, we saw how the irregularities in the ballot paper were caught through cameras. If the same problem occurs through EVM, VVPAT program, it would not have been caught on camera nor would the officers present there have been able to catch it. In the talk, Vijay Narayan, National Committee Member, Socialist Party (India), Right to Recall Party’s Bhilwara candidate Pawan Kumar and National Vice President of Socialist Party India Sandeep Pandey also reiterated their apprehension regarding EVMs.