M.G. Devasahayam 
The Haryana election results and the Congress party’s unhappiness with the Election Commission of India (EC) has reactivated the fierce debate on the integrity of holding elections through Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). This time, the Congress has made the specific allegation of the “possible stealing of people’s mandate” in at least 20 assembly constituencies.
After a meeting with the ECI, Congress leader Pawan Khera said the party had called for the EC to seal voting machines they have filed complaints against. “We will send more complaints in the next 48 hours,” Khera stated, adding that they have submitted documents related to alleged irregularities in 20 constituencies and plan to release these to the media.
Curiously, this kind of protest was not made when a similar issue was flagged by civil society during the recently concluded general election to parliament. Here is a brief extract from the report released by Voice For Democracy (VFD) in the third week of July, 2024:
“Unexplained Vote Increase: Most significantly, the numerical analysis of the election results and voter turnout percentage conducted by us reveals that the subsequent hike in voter turnout has arguably, disproportionately benefited the ruling regime.
“Notably, for all the 7 phases considered together, the cumulative hike in votes from initial turnout figures to final turnout figures is 4,65,46,885 (4.65 crores) to be precise! This figure has been arrived at after a careful Phase-wise Extrapolation in Numbers of Votes. This percentage increase is of 3.2 % to a 6.32 % average across a seven-phase poll.
“Further aggregated within the Phases and States of the Union on the basis of ECI’s own data this difference in Vote percentage is a staggering 12.54 % in Andhra Pradesh and 12.48 % in Odisha…The ECI has, so far, not been forthcoming with any credible reasons for the hike. This then leads to one more question, has the 2024 Lok Sabha Mandate been Stolen from the People of India.”
It further said:
“Extrapolated Vote Increase translates into 79 seats countrywide: This unprecedented vote percentage increase translated into actual votes has meant that the thus “manipulated” figures of Votes Recovered and Counted ensured that 18 more seats were arguably won by the ruling NDA (BJP) in Odisha, eleven in Maharashtra, 10 in West Bengal, 7 in Andhra Pradesh, 6 in Karnataka, 5 each in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, three each in in Bihar, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Telangana, 2 in Assam and 1 each in Arunachal Pradesh, Gujarat and Kerala.
“This means that a possible, minimum of as many as 79 seats in 15 states could have been won by the NDA/BJP through this hike of Votes!”
Based on this and several other factors pointing to a very unfair and non-transparent election, VFD issued a comprehensive notice to the ECI on 19 July, 2024 inter alia seeking:
- Thorough investigation into the issues raised and the irregularities/illegalities pointed out in the notice for the information of the voting public who are the real stake-holders in any election and take immediate remedial action on all the issues raised; and
- Order immediate registration of a first information report under Section 129 of the Representation of the People’s Act, 1951, Section 65,66,66F of the Information Technology Act, 200 and Sections 171F/409/417/466/120B/201/34 Indian Penal Code and investigation into the roles of all involved, including ECI officials, BEL and ECIL engineers, and beneficiary parties.
The ECI did not bother to respond because they do not have any answer. But some proxies have cropped up to defend EVMs.
Yogendra Yadav recently wrote an article in the Indian Express launching a scathing attack on the VFD report, ridiculing its authors and defending EVMs.
Some of his arguments are worth reproducing:
“The debate surrounding the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) is easily among the most weird passions of our public life. Just as every Indian must prescribe you medicine for every known and unknown disease, every Indian who can barely type an SMS must have an opinion on EVM software. After suffering hundreds of hours of confidential, hush-hush, gyan on this subject, I have realised that a combination of love for democracy, sense of helplessness and longing for science fiction is injurious to a country’s political health. Over the last 15 years, the cast of characters has changed but the script has remained the same, even after the introduction of VVPAT machines. So far, this debate has only served to sow seeds of deep suspicion about the entire exercise of elections while distracting from some real electoral malpractices that remain under the radar.”
Yadav concludes his article by saying: “A self-proclaimed “mother of democracy” and a global hub of IT deserves to debate the design of democracy and not that of a voting machine.”
The real drama unfolds now. Since I was part of the VFD report I wrote to the editor of the Indian Express seeking permission to write a rejoinder article on the subject of the same length. I was given the go ahead for a 750-800-word article, which I promptly sent. After several days’ delay, a “playback piece”of around 500 words was sent to me which was a terribly truncated and mutilated version of my article. When we protested, we were told that it was the editorial policy of the newspaper not to write anything negative about EVMs and the EC.
In my article, I had clarified that the VFD report did not come out of the blue, but has a distinct background. As is known, EVMs are ‘black boxes’ and voting under this system does not comply with the most essential ‘democracy principles’ of a voter having the knowledge that her vote is cast as intended, recorded as cast and counted as recorded.
It also does not provide provable guarantees against hacking, tampering and spurious vote injections. Design and implementation of EVMs as well as the results of both software and hardware verification are not public and open to independent review. Due to absence of verifiability, the present system is unfit for democratic elections.
The report titled “Is the Indian EVM and VVPAT System Fit for Democratic Elections?”, released in January, 2021 by the Citizens Commission on Election comprising top national and international experts on the subject, confirms all these.
To make the system verifiable, the Supreme Court had ordered introduction of VVPATs in 2013, saying that a “paper trail” is an indispensable requirement of free and fair elections and that “it is necessary to set up EVMs with VVPAT system because vote is nothing but an act of expression which has immense importance in a democratic system.”
But in defiance of this order, in the EC in 2018 directed state chief electoral officers to mandatorily verify VVPAT slips in only one randomly selected polling station in each assembly constituency. This pathetically low 0.5% sample size defeated the very object of installing VVPATs in all EVMs and was tantamount to non-implementation of the Supreme Court order. Subsequently, though the sample size was increased to a microscopic 2% through an ad hoc order of the Supreme Court, the EC has been vehemently opposing verifiability for reasons that are now getting obvious.
Since this had dangerous portents for fair elections, in August or September 2023, civil society organisations submitted a memorandum to the EC signed by about 10,000 voters making a specific demand: “A voter should be able to get the VVPAT slip in her hand and cast it in a chip-free ballot box for the vote to be valid. These VVPAT slips should be fully counted first for all constituencies before the results are declared.” The ECI did not even acknowledge this request.
According to domain experts, this deliberate denial of verifiability has facilitated the spurious injection of votes in various constituencies by hiking vote percentages in all phases of polling. The gross mismatch between the EC’s provisional and final figures of votes polled is astounding and staggering. This, coupled with the failure of the EC to abide by its legal obligations and provide 17-C forms to all candidates that are the ultimate arbiter/proof of votes polled only confirms the suspicion that has now gained wide currency. It is the EC’s responsibility to come clean and disprove this but they have maintained deadly silence despite civil society representatives serving them a comprehensive notice (with data) on July 19, 2024.
Instead, adopting an adamant, secretive and insensitive attitude, the EC totally relies upon its glossy FAQs, manuals and handbooks to conduct ‘fair elections.’ But these are hardly complied with on the ground. The EC throws all complaints of non-compliance into the dustbin and refuses even preliminary inquiries. It looks as if in the last few years some agency has developed a pattern for bulk manipulation of the voting system and election results – and this system is being fiercely protected by the ECI, the government, higher judiciary and the corporate media.
This is why there is growing public distrust in EVMs. Parliament, which represents the ‘will of the people’, must take up the issue in all seriousness, debate it at depth and find an abiding solution so that elections do not descend into a whim of the machines. If not done, that will be end of democracy.
MG Devasahayam, formerly of the IAS, is Coordinator, Citizens Commission on Elections.