Page 3 - June2018

Editor’s Note

ECI yet to resolve VVPAT glitches

with 2019 polls round the corner

The large scale failure of sev- ing booth from each constituency can be matched
eral VVPAT EVMs during recent during counting to check the veracity and credibility
byelections has once again put of the voting. The purpose is to bring in transparency.
the blame squarely on the Elec- The VVPAT EVMs failure may be lack of training given
tion Commission of India. Polling to the field staff or due to rising temperature but the
in the fiercely contested Lok Sab- incident is enough to generate enough heat among po-
ha byelections in Kairana in Uttar litical parties as ECI plans to deploy 16 lakh VPAT EVMs
Pradesh where Samajwadi Party and during the 2019 general election. The ECI has dismissed
Bahujan Samaj Party had joined hands reports suggesting that claims of large-scale malfunc-
in the wake of success tasted by the duo earlier was tioning of VVPATs were “exaggerated” but admission
married by reports of malfunctioning of VVPATs. by Chief Election Commissioner of Uttar Pradesh that
Similarly, polling in Bhandra-Gondiya and Palghar in complaints were received from 384 polling stations in
Maharashtra and Nagaland and other Assembly con- Kairana alone, points to glitches in several machines.
stituencies witnessed unruly scenes because of tech- Little doubt that the opposition demanded re-elec-
nical glitches in the EVMs in many booths. The saving tion and returning to the old system of ballot papers.
grace for ECI is that byelections were held for just four The VVPAT replacement rate, due to glitches in the
Lok Sabha and nine Assembly seats and it was not a machines that were deployed, was as high as 20.82 per
general election. Large-scale malfunctioning of Voter cent in Kairana, 19.22 per cent in Bhandara-Gondia and
Verifiable Paper Audit Trail has put a question mark 13.16 per cent in Palghar. There is an urgent need for ECI
over the functioning of ECI as general election is less to fix glitches in the functioning of VPAT EVMs ahead
than an year away. of 2019 general election so that its integrity remains
The ECI was expected to be battle-ready and pro- intact. The Election Commission of India must remem-
vide foolproof mechanism in view of allegations that ber the moral in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar
some EVMs used for voting in recently held Karnataka that “Caesar’s wife must always be above suspicion”!
Assembly election were brought from Gujarat and
were rigged. The VVPATs facilitate voters to verify if
their vote has indeed gone to the intended candidate
by leaving a paper trail of the vote cast. It is an adjunct
machine connected to the ballot and control units of
the EVM and slips from a randomly selected poll- (charanjit ahuja)

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3 Editor'sNote.indd 3 04/06/18 12:21 PM