EVMs get SC backing

THE Supreme Court has rejected all petitions seeking 100 per cent verification of Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) votes with their Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips, even as it has ruled out a return to the paper ballot voting system. The court has rightly observed that blindly distrusting any aspect of the system can breed unwarranted scepticism. ‘Instead, a critical yet constructive approach guided by evidence and reason should be followed... to ensure the system’s credibility and effectiveness,’ said Justice Dipankar Datta.

The court has given candidates the option of making a request for an inspection of 5 per cent of the EVMs per Assembly segment in each parliamentary constituency within seven days of the declaration of the result. The expenses for conducting the exercise are to be borne by the candidates themselves; in case any EVM is found to be tampered with, they will get a refund. Even though Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar asserted last month that EVMs were 100 per cent safe, doubts persist about their robustness and reliability.

The court has done well to turn down the demand for tallying all VVPAT slips with EVM votes as this is a potentially cumbersome and time-consuming process that could inordinately delay the poll result. The need of the hour is to ensure that the machines have inbuilt safeguards to make them tamper-proof. It is worrisome that polling was impacted in Marathwada and Vidarbha districts of Maharashtra on Friday due to technical snags in EVMs. Such glitches, though rare, raise doubts about the functioning of the machines and spark allegations of foul play. Electronic voting has been an unqualified success in India. The key now is to improve the efficacy of EVMs through suitable technological interventions.

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