As per sources quoted in The Wire, the Election Commission of India sent back 6.5 lakh VVPAT machines for being defective. These were from among the newest machine that were purchased in the run up to the 2019 General Elections. They were also subsequently used for Assembly Elections of many states. A total of 17.4 lakh VVPAT machines were ordered in 2018 and it has now been revealed that over 6.5 lakh of these machines turned out to be defective.

These machines were sourced from Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) as well as Electronics Corporation of India Limited, Hyderabad, among others.

“The defective VVPATs were awaiting repairs following a decision taken by the ECI on October 8, 2021. The Wire has learnt that instructions have not been sent to the union territories of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep and Daman and Diu,” reported The Wire.

When the publication spoke to a member of the opposition, they said that no explanation was given to them about the reason for which the machines were being sent back.

What is VVPAT?

The full form of VVPAT is Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail. It is a machine as important as the EVM or Electronic Voter Machine as it gives instant feedback to the voter with a printed voting slip. Once a vote is registered by the voter, by pressing on a button, the VVPAT machine prints the slips containing the name of the candidate voted for and automatically drops it in a sealed box. It is placed in a transparent box and when it prints the vote, it is displayed to the voter for 7 seconds before it gets dropped in the storage box.

However, VVPATs are not tallied in every polling booth. It has been a long standing demand of political parties that VVPATs be tallied with the final vote count. For now, VVPATS are counted in a random fashion where only some constituency’s votes are tallied with VVPAT slips.

VVPAT verification is also done when there are allegations of fraud or miscalculation of votes.

In case of discrepancy between number of votes counted by EVM and number of votes recorded by VVPAT, the latter is upheld.

In the 2019 general elections at least 8 cases of mismatch between EVM and VVPAT votes were found in Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya and Andhra Pradesh.

VVPAT slips were hurriedly destroyed in 2019

The revelation of these defective VVPATs brings into question why the ECI destroyed voter slips recorded by the VVPATS merely within 4 months of the 2019 general elections, in violation of the law.

The Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961, under rule 94 (b) states that packets referred to in Rule 93(1) shall be retained for a period of one year and shall thereafter be destroyed and those packets containing the counterfoils of used ballot papers shall not be destroyed except with the previous approval of the Election Commission.

The packets referred to in Rule 93(1) include:

               (a) The packets of unused ballot papers with counterfoils attached thereto;

(b) The packets of used ballot papers whether valid, tendered or rejected;

(c) The packets of the counterfoils of used ballot papers;

(d) The packets of the marked copy of the electoral roll or, as the case may be, the list maintained under sub-section (1) or sub-section (2) of section 152; and

²[(dd) the packets containing registers of voters in form 17-A;]

(e) The packets of the declarations by electors and the attestation of their signatures; (emphasis provided)

This means it is mandatory for the Election Commission to retain used ballot papers (among others) for at least a year. Then why were these ballot papers recorded by VVPATS in the 2019 general election destroyed within 4 months? The Quint had earlier both found and exposed this information that the VVPAT slips were destroyed through an RTI three years ago. Through the RTI it was found that the VVPAT slips were destroyed on the basis of express orders issued by the ECI. The publication also found that after VVPATS were assigned for the elections, they were checked and maintained by employees of a private company which left them vulnerable to be tampered with.

 Supreme Court petition

A plea was filed by the NGO Association for Democratic Reforms last week seeking a declaration that it is the fundamental right of every voter to verify that their vote has been ‘recorded as cast’ and ‘counted as recorded’, reported LiveLaw. The plea pointed towards a vacuum in law as there is no procedure for the voter to verify that the vote has been ‘counted as recorded’ since there is no procedure to match the EVM voted with VVPATs. This refers to the randomly selected constituencies where such cross checking is done while other constituencies rely upon just EVM votes.

The petition states that a paper trial is a must and indispensable element of free and fair elections.

In 2019 a bench led by then CJI SA Bobade had dismissed a plea filed by Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief N. Chandrababu Naidu and 21 other parties seeking counting of at least 50% of VVPAT slips.

Civil servants speak

The Wire spoke to a former Chief Election Commissioner as well as another former civil servant to get their view on VVPAT counting. The former CEC said, “All VVPAT slips can be counted in a matter of seconds if they decide to use currency counting machines. These machines can be reprogrammed or the paper size can be enlarged to fit the machine. The technology is available. All that is required is the will.”

A former civil servant and a member of the Citizens Commission on Elections, M.G. Devasahayam, says, “In Germany, they went back to the paper ballot system because the EVM/VVPAT method was found to be ‘unconstitutional’ by their Supreme Court.”

M.G. Devasahayam, a former Army and IAS officer wrote in The Wire how transparent the paper ballot system was, since the vote was cast manually by stamping a paper and counting was done in the presence of the Returning Officer (RO) and candidates’ agents. He pointed out that in Germany EVMs were declared unconstitutional compelling the whole of Europe to go back to paper ballots and most of the USA also followed suit.

Citizens’ Commission on Elections

In January 2021, the Citizens’ Commission on Elections had come out with a report stating that EVMs cannot be assumed to be tamper proof. The CCE is chaired by former Supreme Court judge Madan Lokur and comprises former chief information commissioner Wajahat Habibullah, former Madras High Court judge Hari Paranthaman, economist Arun Kumar, activist John Dayal, senior journalist Pamela Philipose, IIT-Delhi professor Subhashis Banerjee and former IAS officer Sundar Burra.

Many experts had deposed before the CCE as well as members of the technical committee of the ECI. The CCE’s report concluded that due to lack of End-to-End (E2E) verifiability, the EVM/VVPAT system is not verifiable and therefore unfit for democratic elections. The report also pointed out that the EVM design is not open for public technical audit which makes it all the more opaque.

Is EVM-VVPAT combination fool proof?

Kannan Gopinathan, the computer scientist turned civil servant (who resigned from services), who was Returning Officer in the 2019 general elections questioned the EVM-VVPAT system. In his thesis he writes, “If EVM-VVPATs are stand-alone machines not connected to any external device, as repeatedly claimed by the Election Commission of India (ECI), how does the VVPAT machine print the name and symbol of the chosen candidate? When and how are the names and symbols of the candidates uploaded on to the VVPAT? Does this affect the technical, physical and procedural security claims of our electronic voting process?”

These questions have been left unanswered till date by the ECI and consequently the transparency of voting and elections is at a questionable precipice.

It is not clear what defective VVPATS mean. Does it mean these VVPATS were unable to display the vote cast by the citizen? Does it mean these VVPATs were unable to record these votes as counted? Does it mean that if cross checked with the EVM votes, these VVPATS fell short, despite them having precedence over EVMs in cases of dispute? All these questions also remain unanswered.

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Ironically, in June this year, the ECI took an identical view while refusing to disclose under the RTI Act details of the dissent notes of its Commissioner Ashok Lavasa on decisions pertaining to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speeches, which were alleged to have violated model code, saying it may “endanger the life or physical safety” of an individual.

Top RTI activist Venkatesh Nayak, who is with the advocacy group Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), had sought information on EVM and VVPAT following “scanty information” about the manner in which polls were conducted across India in April-May 2019 general elections, which returned the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government to power with a thumping majority.

Dissatisfied, says Nayak in an email alert to Counterview, several private citizens and mediapersons used RTI to seek information about voter turnout data mismatch, complaints about EVMs malfunctioning, complaints about mismatch of EVMs and VVPAT printouts, movement of EVMs and VVPATs to the electoral constituencies from the manufacturing companies, and details of action taken on complaints received against high profile politicians for violating the Model Code of Conduct.

After many of these requests were turned down by relevant public authorities, Nayak asserts, on June 17, 2019, he decided to file two identical RTI applications seeking information from BEL, as also the Electronics Corporation of India Ltd (ECIL), the two manufacturers of the voting machines.

ECIL, says Nayak, “Uploaded some of this information on the RTI Online Facility but rejected access to some crucial bits of information sought in my RTI application”, but has not received “a formal reply from ECIL.”

As for BEL, Nayak says, initially, the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) of BEL “sent a fee intimation letter for Rs 1,434 for a total of 717 pages after almost a month”, agreeing to “supply most of the information”, even though denying “access to the VVPAT patent application filed with the Office of the Controller General of Patents by citing Section 8(1)(d) of the RTI Act.”
 

How could BEL say it did not have necessary information on EVMs, VVATs? Which papers did they count before sending the reply that information was contained in 717 pages?

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The Election Commission of India should tally the numbers of most Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines with those of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) to enhance people’s confidence in the polls. A discussion with Rahul Roy, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute and Prabir Purkayastha of the Free Software Movement in India and editor, NewsClick.

Courtesy: News Click

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The parties had initially demanded that the paper trail match count should take place in at least 50 per cent of the polling booths in each assembly segment instead of the previous provision for just one booth. But at a hearing held on April 8, just before the commencement of the first phase of a seven phases election, the ECI had held that doing so would delay polling by five days. They has also submitted findings of a report by the Indian Statistical Institute that said sample verification of EVMs and VVPATs out of a total of over 10 lakh machines showed accuracy of 99.99 per cent. But the SC directed them to increase the number of polling booths for the random match counting to five per assembly constituency.
Following this, parties who had made the plea scaled down their demand to just 25 per cent of the constituencies and filed a plea to review the previous order. However, the SC today rejected this appeal. Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi reportedly said, “We are not inclined to modify our order.”

The plea came in light of multiple instances of mismatches between the vote cast and the VVPAT reading being reported from across the country. The key pleaders included Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah, AAP MP Sanjay Singh and veteran CPI leader D Raja.

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The Election Department has started investigating the seized machines and the opposition has alleged that this incident is linked to the many EVM scams being reported from the area.

 
Jhansi: Two vehicles loaded with EVM machines were seized in Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh as the fourth phase of Lok Sabha elections was underway on Monday.
 
According to the information received, the EVM machines were loaded in the City Magistrate’s car, while the VVPAT machines were kept in a private car. As the police arrived after receiving this information, the people transporting the EVM machines fled the scene. The Election Department has started investigating the seized machines and the opposition has alleged that this incident is linked to the many EVM scams being reported from the area.

 
In another UP constituency, glaring negligence was reported during the fourth phase of elections in the Hamirpur-Mahoba Tindwara Lok Sabha seat 47. The EVM machine suddenly disappeared after the voting process was completed last evening due to the negligence of the presiding booth officer. The machine disappeared from the strong room where it was kept for recalibration. The loss of the machine caused a lot of chaos and confusion and even after searching for the whole day, all the top officials, including the District Election Officer and Superintendent of Police were unsuccessful in locating the machine. At present, the police and administrative superintendents are busy looking for the EVM machine, while the other personnel involved in the polling, including the careless presiding officer, are in custody and investigation is underway.
 
The incident happened in the village of Nogaanv Fandna in the Panwadi police station area of Mahoba. After the completion of the fourth phase of Lok Sabha elections, the EVM machines were kept in the strong room at a state Polytechnic college. When the machine was not found at its designated spot, its disappearance caused panic among all the polling officers including the district presiding officer.
 
Taking the matter seriously, all the officials including District Election Officer Sahdev, Superintendent of Police Swaminathan tried to find the access machine in the village but were unsuccessful. The Police and administrative officials are searching for the EVM machine with the help of the villagers who are camping in the village.
 
Meanwhile, the administrative authorities seem to be avoiding the entire incident. Nagaych, the first voting officer, Razia Begum, the second polling officer, Amarendra Kumar, the third polling officer and presiding officer Kamlesh Kumar are being questioned in police custody. The police are interrogating villagers to get to the bottom of this issue.
 
(Article translated from Hindi.)
 

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CJP was the first complainant when we wrote to the Election Commission highlighting how provisions of Rule 49 MA of the Conduct of Elections (Amendment) Rules 2013 can be a deterrent to the democratic process by discouraging genuine complainants.

Under this provision, the complainant is required to give a written declaration that says, “I am aware of the penal provisions of section 177 of the IPC that I shall be liable to be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to six months, or with fine which may extend to one thousand rupees, or with both, if the declaration given by me in para 1 above to the Presiding Officer appointed under section 26 of the RP Act, 1951 is found to be incorrect.” 

The rule not only puts the fear of punishment in the complainant, it also fails to take into account the possibility of mismatch due to malfunction or hacking.

Activist Philose Koshy had also raised the issue in his letter to the EC. Mumbai based lawyer Sunil Ahya then filed a PIL highlighting how placing the onus of proving the complaint would dissuade people from coming forward. Ahya’s petition also said, “This may also create an illusion of free and fair elections, whereas the fact would be that people have simply not come forward to lodge complaints.” The petition prays for a direction to the EC to set aside rule 49MA.
 

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Elections are just round the corner and amidst fears about the tampering of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM), there is also a grave concern with respect to penal provisions related to Conduct of Election Rules. These provisions punish voters if they point out discrepancies in their Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) but are unable to prove it while casting a test vote.

 
The provisions are governed by Rule 49MA of the Conduct of Elections (Amendment) Rules 2013. Here is what the rule says:
 

49MA Procedure in case of complaint about particulars printed on paper slip-

(1) Where printer for paper trail is used, if an elector after having recorded his vote under rule 49M alleges that the paper slip generated by the printer has shown the name or symbol of a candidate other than the one he voted for, the presiding officer shall obtain a written declaration from the elector as to the allegation, after warning the elector about the consequence of making a false declaration.

(2) If the elector gives the written declaration referred to in sub-rule (1), the presiding officer shall make a second entry related to that elector in Form 17A, and permit the elector to record a test vote in the voting machine in his presence and in the presence of the candidates or polling agents who may be present in the polling station, and observe the paper slip generated by the printer.

(3) If the allegation is found true, the presiding officer shall report the facts immediately to the returning officer, stop further recording of votes in that voting machine and act as per the direction that may be given by the Returning Officer.

(4) If, however, the allegation is found to be false and the paper slip so generated under sub-rule (1) matches with the test vote recorded by the elector under sub-rule (2), then, the presiding officer shall-
(i) make a remark to that effect against the second entry relating to that elector in Form 17A mentioning the serial number and name of the candidate for whom such test votes has been
recorded;
(ii) obtain the signature or thumb impression of that elector against such remarks; and
(iii) make necessary entries regarding such test vote in item 5 in Part I of Form 17C.

So far so good. But the declaration signed by the complainant says,
 

“I am aware of the penal provisions of section 177 of the IPC that I shall be liable to be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to six months, or with fine which may extend to one thousand rupees, or with both, if the declaration given by me in para 1 above to the Presiding Officer appointed under section 26 of the RP Act, 1951 is found to be incorrect.”

This is the part which makes it problematic as this could have the impact of terrifying a voter into not complaining and thus impacting negatively on a free and fair election process. The Format for declaration under Rule 49MA may be viewed here.

The matter was first raised by Philipose Koshy who has written to the Election Commission highlighting this issue. Koshy also intimated CJP about the same. Koshy’s letter to the EC may be read here:

Taking cognisance of Koshy’s letter, CJP has now written to the Chief Election Commissioner. In our letter we have said, “The free and fair election process, which is the bedrock of Indian democracy, will be under serious threat if voters fail to report the false VVPAT display for fear of criminal prosecution in case the complaint “found” as false by the ECI officials.” We have also suggested the a few methods to resolve voters’ VVPAT complaint.

CJP’s entire letter may be read here:

Given how rule 49 MA appears to be an antithesis to everything democracy stands for, we request both the removal of the penal provisions of rule 49 MA with immediate effect, and also the adoption of a method that objectively determines the veracity of VVPAT complaints.
 

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Former civil servants of the All India and Central Services who have worked for decades with the Central and State Governments wrote an open letter to the general public and political parties to acquaint them about the proper implementation of VVPAT-based audit of EVMs for the upcoming general elections.
 
“As former civil servants who have conducted and supervised elections over the past six decades, our group is concerned about the loose allegations being flung about to serve partisan ends,” they wrote in their letter, proposing a solution to the implementation of VVPAT-based audit of EVMs which is statistically sound. They hope that the Election Commission of India will soon come out with a solution that answers the issues that are being raised.
 
In the letter, they suggested solutions that can make the process of voting and counting as free as possible from suspicions of Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) malfunction and manipulation.
 
“It is common knowledge that EVMs are ‘black boxes’ in which it is impossible for voters to verify whether their votes have been recorded and counted correctly, and in which miscounts due to EVM malfunction or manipulation are undetectable and unchallengeable. Hence, there is an imperative need for an additional verifiable physical record of every vote cast, in the form of ‘voter verified paper audit trail’ (VVPAT). It allows for a partial or total recount independent of the EVM’s electronic count and helps detect counting mistakes and frauds that would otherwise go undetected. In 2013, the Supreme Court passed an order mandating the use of EVMs with VVPAT units, and the Election Commission of India (ECI) has been deploying VVPAT units in Assembly Elections from 2017 onwards,” they wrote.
 
They suggested that If VVPAT is to have any real security or accuracy value, it should form the basis of a proper audit plan. This entails tallying the electronic count as per the EVMs with the manual count as per the VVPAT slips for a ‘statistically significant’ sample size of EVMs chosen at random from a suitably defined ‘population’ of EVMs. Equally important is a clear ‘decision rule’ about what should be done in the event of a ‘defective EVM’ turning up in the sample. A ‘defective EVM’ is one in which the EVM count does not tally with the VVPAT count due to either EVM malfunction or manipulation.
 
They wrote that the audit plan that the ECI has followed in recent elections suffers from the following serious shortcomings:
 
First, the ECI has prescribed a statistically incorrect sample size of just “one polling station (i.e. 1 EVM) per Assembly Constituency” uniformly for all Assembly Constituencies and all States. It has not considered the fact that the number of EVMs in an Assembly Constituency varies widely across States from about 20 to about 300, and in a State from 589 (for Sikkim) to 23,672 (for Chhattisgarh which is the median State) to nearly 1,50,000 (for Uttar Pradesh). The civil servants were of the view that a uniform sample size for widely varying finite population sizes does not conform to fundamental principles of statistical sampling theory.
 
Second, they said that the ECI has not made public as to how it arrived at its sample size nor has it specified the population to which this sample size relates. The latter is important because the sample size is dependent upon how the population is defined. If we assume that one per cent of the EVMs are defective, the probability that the ECI’s present sample size will fail to detect at least one defective EVM is 99 per cent if ‘EVMs deployed in an Assembly Constituency’ are defined as the population; 94 per cent if ‘EVMs deployed in a Parliamentary Constituency’ are defined as the population; and varies from about 2 per cent (U.P) to 40 per cent (Chhattisgarh) to 71 per cent (Sikkim) if ‘EVMs deployed in a State as a whole’ are defined as the population. Such high margins of error are unacceptable in a democracy.
 
Third, the ECI has been vague about its ‘decision rule’ in the event of one or more defective EVMs turning up in the chosen sample, they wrote.
 
Fourth, the ECI has not been transparent about the results of its VVPAT-based audit of EVMs for the various Assembly Elections held in 2017 and 2018 and the details are not available on its website.
 
In short, the ECI’s audit plan is unable to detect outcome-altering miscounts due to EVM malfunction or manipulation, which defeats the very purpose of introducing VVPATs. Spending hundreds of crores of rupees on the procurement of VVPAT units makes little sense if their utilisation for audit purposes is reduced to an exercise in tokenism.
 
“Our group has been engaged over the past nine months in discussions with the ECI on issues relating to the proper VVPAT-based audit of EVMs. In our letter dated 10th December 2018 to the Chief Election Commissioner, we had sought clarifications from the ECI about certain pointed queries regarding the sample size and the decision rules. We had requested that in the interest of ensuring public confidence and the cooperation of political parties, it would be in the fitness of things if the clear reasons for adoption of a particular sample size and the decision rule for counting of VVPAT paper ballots are placed in the public domain, including on the ECI website. But there has been no action on this front,” they wrote.
 
The lack of transparency in VVPAT-based audit of EVMs has fuelled various conspiracy theories about ‘mass rigging of EVMs’. There have been unacceptable demands for reversion to paper ballots. But the real issue today is not about “EVMs versus Paper Ballots”; rather it is about “EVMs with perfunctory VVPAT audit versus EVMs with proper VVPAT audit,” they added.
 
Any electronic equipment is inherently subject to random malfunction. By its own admission, the ECI keeps about 20-25% of EVMs and VVPAT units in reserve to replace those which malfunctions on the polling day within a few hours of the commencement of the poll.
 
There is every likelihood that a certain percentage of EVMs may again malfunction randomly during the long interval of 15-30 days between the date of polling and the date of counting.
 
Perhaps this explains the occasionally noticed random discrepancies between the polling station-wise figures of voter turnout and the votes as counted in EVMs. The argument that some Presiding Officers ‘forgot’ to initialise the EVM count to zero at the end of the mock poll demonstration before the regular polling commences does not explain why there are positive as well as negative discrepancies.
 
As regards EVM manipulation, the former civil servants stated that though it is highly improbable, this low probability can increase significantly with insider collusion. While the ECI has put in place a security protocol and various administrative safeguards that look impressive on paper, vulnerabilities do exist. Large-scale rigging of EVMs may not be possible or necessary because potential attackers need to target only select EVMs to tip the balance in a few marginal, closely fought constituencies. What is worrisome is that without a credible VVPAT-based audit of EVMs, the fraud may be undetectable and may be carried on with impunity.
 
They have appealed to the ECI to go in for a statistically correct sample size that can detect at least one defective EVM with 99.9 per cent reliability, in a suitably defined population, by adopting the hypergeometric probability distribution model. In something as important as ensuring the integrity of the election process – a process which in any case takes about 2-3 months from the date of announcement to the date of counting – a delay of a few hours or even a day in the manual counting of VVPAT slips of a larger (statistically correct) sample size of EVMs should not matter at all. They made these suggestions in their letter.
 
“We also appeal to the ECI to adopt the following ‘decision rules’. Full manual counting of VVPAT slips should be done (1) for all the remaining EVMs of the defined population if the sample throws up one or more defective EVMs, (2) for closely contested constituencies where the margin of victory is below 2 per cent of the votes cast or 1000 votes, whichever is less, even if no defective EVM turns up in the sample, and (3) for those polling stations where the discrepancy between the votes polled in EVMs and votes as counted in EVMs is more than 2 per cent,” they said.
 
They requested the ECI to implement these suggestions in the Lok Sabha elections due in April-May 2019. They believe that though the counting process may take a little longer, the confidence of the voters and political parties in the electoral process will be reinforced. “The ECI has a long and honourable record of holding free and fair elections. It is in the spirit of supporting it in maintaining these high standards that we write this open letter,” they wrote.
 

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Image: PTI

The EC had said it would conduct random vote counts on EVMs and VVPAT slips in one polling station in each of the 182 Assembly constituencies. Gujarat’s Chief Electoral Officer ‘admits’ some mismatch in EVMs and VVPAT slips in Gujarat, sparks controversy according to a PTI report.

Gujarat’s Chief Electoral Officer, BB Swain, first claimed that there was ‘100% match’ between the EVMs and the slips of VVPAT machines. But, the same PTI report also quoted Swain as saying that at least on four booths, there were mismatch of paper slips and votes counted on EVMs.

Swain’s confession, hidden in the body of the PTI report carried by News18, assumes significance since there have already been allegations of EVMs tampering by opposition leaders including Hardik Patel and Sanjay Nirupam.

One user Ravi Gautam posted a series of tweets asking questions on the credibility of the results announced on Monday.He wrote, “There were mismatch between EVM and VVPAT slips on 4 out of 182 seats. so more than 2% mismatch. 2% vote share is questionable. that is 6 lakhs votes.”

Swain said that they were at Vagra, Dwarka, Ankleshwar and Bhavnagar- Rural seats.

“There was a mismatch of some votes on one booth each of these four seats. This occurred because the Returning Officer must have made the same mistake but it could not be detected earlier. So we took into account VVPAT slips for these booths during the counting and resolved the issue,” he was quoted as saying.

Sabrangindia had carried screenshots of local Gujarati channels showing more votes polled than recorded voters in at least three constituencies in Gujarat

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Victory has a hundred fathers, defeat is an orphan, goes the saying. An unprecedented new political situation has risen in UP this time with BJP and its allies romping home with 325/403 seats in the state Assembly.
 
How did BJP manage such a landslide? 
 
Part of the answer lies in its comfortable majority of 272 in Parliament and the anti-incumbency vote against the BSP and SP governments of the last decade. 
But how demonetisation helped the BJP is the real miracle.
 
It is now an open-secret that the total amount of currency in circulation which was to be deposited in banks from November 8-Decemeber 30 last year has been far exceeded. The RBI is maintaining a deafening silence on the issue despite numerous RTI queries. It is hiding behind the plea of national-security to stonewall the queries.
 
The fact is that demonetisation has benefitted everyone. The fat cats who had hoarded currency got it deposited in ever-so-eager banks and with jewellers, paying a commission as high as 30%. Thus, it won't be out of place to conclude in retrospect that perhaps the entire exercise was to convert black money as well as fake currency into white-money. 
 
Demonetisation also eased the space constraints for major hoarders as now only 50 notes of Rs 2,000 can make a lakh. Fake currency notes have once again started surfacing. So is it just a vicious cycle?
 
Many died in bitter cold while standing for hours during the 50 days campaign and yet people voted heavily in favour of BJP. In UP millions of jobless, unemployed, under-employed labourers and daily wagers etc stood in lines to exchange one lakh rupees for their masters on daily basis, and were paid Rs 5,000 towards “service charges”.
 
Millions of them deposited their masters’ money in their personal accounts, opened new accounts at the behest of their masters. Jan Dhan Yojna accounts saw a huge spike in deposits and their masters’ money is now sitting in their personal accounts.
 
Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that he would find some way (in order to make this money their own) and this fired the popular imagination. A poor man who never had Rs 1,000 in his account now had lakhs in it and if he could manage to keep it as his own he would be indebted to Modi forever.
 
Now the deadline of March 31 is over and obviously the masters will seek return of their money. That’s when it would be most helpful to have a BJP government at the helm to look to for help when complaining to the police about harassment. It is anybody’s guess that an avalanche of such defaulters is in the offing.
 
Thus, Modi has brought happiness to the poor who were also elated over the fact that the rich and middle-class had been brought down to their level, made to stand in the same queues as them.
 
This together with the BJP’s anti-Muslim politics, the Central government’s Urjaa Yojna, representation to non-Jatav and non-Yadav communities, anti-incumbency against SP coupled with its ignominious in-house fighting, tilt of the upper castes towards BJP is what the Assembly results are all about.
 
BSP was vociferous in its opposition to demonetisation while SP could only put up a timid response.
 
Another factor which has become even more relevant after the civic elections in Delhi is that of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). The Modi government has finally approved equipping EVMs with Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) following sustained opposition from all parties. 
 
BSP supremo Mayawati has gone to Supreme Court which has given four-week’s time to Chief Election Commission (CEC) to reply. It is ironic that this initiative should have come from Mayawati and not the outgoing CM Akhilesh Yadav. Instead, the latter attended the March 18 oath ceremony of Yogi Adityanath while his father Mulayam Singh Yadav whispered in Modi’s ears triggering speculation.
 
Did we find Mayawati present in Akhilesh Yadav swearing-in ceremony in 2012? Certainly not.
 
The results from the UP elections have baffled everyone. Even the BJP had not imagined such a landslide victory. People’s confidence in the voting system through EVM has reached a new low, particularly after demonetisation when people have started to believe that anything is possible with BJP at the helm. 
 
In the aftermath of 2014 results, I had in my personal capacity spoken to numerous ministers in UP, suggesting that they should insist that 2017 Assembly polls be with ballot paper. Now it is time to get rid of EVMs or else whatever little semblance of representative power the masses have, that too once every five-years, is slated to be doomed.
 
Polls are no less than an examination paper where everyone has the right to see the answer script.
 
EVMs have no takers but our CEC seems committed to the sarkari line. The Supreme Court of Germany in a landmark judgement in March 2009 held that “electronic voting is unconstitutional because the average citizen could not be expected to understand the exact steps involved in the recording and tallying of votes by EVMs”.
 
EVMs are banned in Germany. They have been abandoned in Holland and Ireland. Technologically advanced Japan and Singapore stick to ballot paper polls. But our CEC continues to insist that EVMs are tamper-proof and the best way out for voting.
 
There have been hundreds of complaints after the advent of EVMs in 2004, but EC seems unconcerned towards over the possibility of ‘insider fraud’ by any of the thousands of authorised personnel having access to EVMs.
 
These include Indian developers and manufactures of the machines, the vendors supplying the components including the foreign companies who have been assigned the security sensitive job of fusing software on to the ‘masked’ microchips sourced from them, the local officials who have the custody of the machines before and after the elections etc. 
 
The issue came to light again recently when the chief election officer in Madhya Pradesh, Saleena Singh (April 2,) found VVPAT machines dispensing only BJP votes! (The allegation reportedly turned out to be untrue. Editors).
 
All such hoaxes have been well documented along with field reports in the book, Democracy at Risk, by GVL Narsimha Rao now freely available on internet. The book clearly indicates that there is room for strong suspicion of insider fraud.
 
This 230 -page book is a minefield of information and should be available in every political party office in India. The book had been the object of discussion in our Parliament too and BJP has castigated it to be just a personal opinion of LK Advani who has written its foreword.
 
BJP has ready-made answers for everything. It won from the Muslim majority seat of Deoband and pat came its tailor-made reply that Muslim women voted for BJP. Should BJP also know that Muslim women are in other constituencies too? 
 
Out of 86 reserved seats in UP, BJP and its allies won 77. The votes of Scheduled Castes (SC) and Muslims are well above 50% on these seats, hence, Jatavs – the traditional vote bank of BSP – presumably voted for BJP. This is where the alarm bells rang for Mayawati.
 
It is high time that elections are made fool-proof where confidence and transparency for every citizen is guaranteed. Even VVPAT is not enough as my submission is that EVMs should have two-prints, one deposited with CEC and the other provided to the voter, with an assigned number duly stamped and signed by the presiding officer, just like how it happens in a bank where a receipt is given on submitting an amount.
 
My vote is my trust and is like my bank account.  All political parties should unanimously put up a joint representation to CEC to stop elections in phases too as given the onslaught of social-media online media blitzkrieg and a fight for TRP by news channels the hapless masses are left susceptible to any kind of polarisation.
 
These days elections have become a month long business. We citizens can wait for a day or a two for results to be declared after manual accounting of every vote.
 
Peoples trust is at risk. The whole project of voting is becoming a humbug. People’s confidence in the system needs to be restored and this is what needs to be the prime objective of CEC, particularly when 'election hacking' has gone commercial as an article by an Israeli writer Yael Even Or in Tablet Magazine: Did An Israeli Company Hack Zimbabwe Elections? That says it all.
 
The writer is UP State Information Commissioner
 
 

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