The discourse on the integrity of our electoral process needs a proper framing. In that framing, the place of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) should have a far less salience than the compliance with the core principles of electoral democracy. One such cardinal principle is the verifiability that a voter’s vote has been “cast as intended; recorded as cast; and counted as recorded.” This principle should take precedence over the purported ‘speed and efficiency’ of EVMs.
The current discourse is framed in a way that makes it willy nilly gravitate towards technical safety or otherwise of the machines, but not towards the compliance of the process with core principles of electoral democracy.
Not that the machines are unimportant. But we need to steer the discourse clear of what a crop of techno-enthusiasts and gratuitous Election Commission apologists derisively dismiss genuine misgivings about EVMs as “the final point in the descent of our democratic imagination.”
The most important reason for the stubborn persistence of doubts about the integrity of our electoral process is the opaqueness in the conduct of the Election Commission of India (ECI). The judiciary, including the Supreme Court (SC), also shares some blame because of its readiness to accept the ECI’s submissions at face value and deliver orders in a rush, disregarding the opinion of independent experts of unimpeachable caliber.
The union government, especially since 2019, acted in questionable ways leading to suspicion that the ECI and the ruling party at the Centre collaborate in perpetuating opaqueness.
The latest amendment to Rule 93(2) (a) of the Conduct of Election Rules notified in the Gazette of India dated December 20, 2024 brings the issue of opaqueness once again to the fore. The Punjab & Haryana High Court delivered an order directing the ECI to make certain records related to the electoral process available to a citizen petitioner.
Also Read: ‘A New Low, No Longer an Umpire’: Political Scientists Decry Election Commission
This is as per the extant rules. But the Union government invoked its powers and “in consultation with the Election Commission of India”, hurried to amend the rules to deny citizens’ access to important records. This act is essentially an unwitting admission that the promised “administrative, technical and legal safeguards” of EVMs are only notional and cannot withstand public scrutiny.
This inevitably leads to suspicions:
Do the ECI and the party in power at the Centre have something to hide?
Are they afraid of a thorough public examination of the records of our electoral process?
Hopefully not. But if not, what explains this indecent haste to bring on these amendments to Election Rules? Had the ECI complied with the HC direction no one would have had any grounds for suspecting the integrity of our electoral process.
Another attempt by the ruling party at the Centre to scuttle transparency merits recalling.
The amendment it brought in in 2019 made the Information Commission and its Commissioners beholden to the pleasure of the government of the day for their salaries and continuance in office. This move has the potential to compromise the body’s autonomy.
The timing of the move is significant. It is done in the wake of several allegations and charges against the ECI regarding the VVPAT count data during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
ECI’s response to the RTI query by the news portal The Quint revealed its opaqueness:
“Polling Station wise data of Lok Sabha Election – 2019 is not available with the Commission. It may be available with CEOs of all states/UTs. You may obtain information from the office of CEOs of the States/UTs by submitting application under RTI Act, 2005 separately. Your application cannot be transferred to them as more than one PIOs are involved u/s 6(3) of RTI Act, 2005.”
But this reply is contrary to the ECI’s own circular that requires “all CEOs to submit their VVPAT data to the Commission within seven days of the counting day.”
The ECI response is also contrary to the Commission’s order which clearly states that even if multiple PIOs are needed to share the information, it is the responsibility of the PIO in possession of the original query to transfer it to the rest of the PIOs.
Even if wrong and misleading, this ECI response had the potential to set in motion an avalanche of RTI applications seeking information and documents on VVPAT of General Elections 2019. This could put the ECI in a tight spot. Therefore, the Union Government’s move then to tame the Information Commission by undermining its autonomy.
If the December 20, 2024 move to amend the Election Rules and the 2019 measure to tame the Information Commission are seen together, one begins to wonder whether the motive of the ECI and the present ruling dispensation at the Centre is to prevent a full-fledged and forensic scrutiny of our electoral process by citizens.
Civil society organisations like Vote For Democracy (VFD), Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), Independent Panel for Monitoring Indian Elections (IPMIE) and others have flagged several instances of mismatch between EVM votes cast and EVM votes counted in both the 2019 and 2024 general elections. They pointed out the abnormal increase of voter turnout between the provisional voter turnout figures at the official closing time of polling and the final figures – both sets of figures released by the ECI. Such instances were pointed out with clear empirical evidence in the case of many state Assembly elections too.
In the 2024 elections not only were there substantial disparities between provisional and final figures but there were other serious abnormalities also.
For instance, the ECI, to begin with, released only percentages of votes polled but not the gross voting figures. Initially, the figures were overall state level average percentages and not constituency wise gross or even percentage figures.
However, after much hue and cry, on May 25, 2024 the poll body released gross figures state wise as well as Lok Sabha constituency wise for five phases. And after three more days, on 28 May 2024, phase 6 gross polling data, state wise as well as lok sabha constituency wise, was also released.
It released the final figures in percentages after many days of delay. It took full twelve days to release the final percentage figures for Phase 1 polling of the 2024 General Elections. For the other 6 phases the lag was between three and five days.
For Phase 2, oddly, the EC released only nationwide preliminary gross percentage for the entire phase at the end of official polling time.
State wise and Lok Sabha constituency wise preliminary figures even in percentages are not divulged even to this day for Phase 2.
The EC thus made it impossible for anyone to work out the disparity between preliminary figures and the final ones for Phase II. We don’t have the preliminary figures to compare the final figures with.
One confronts yet another conundrum here that is beyond anyone’s grasp. The EC released Lok Sabha constituency wise final gross figures for 6 phases on 28 May 2024.
And for phase 7, the final gross polled votes figures were released on June 6, 2024. Yes, on June 6, two full days after the counting had concluded and results had been announced.
Yet, even after this long delay, EVM polled votes’ figures do not match the figures for counted EVM votes in 538 out of the 542 constituencies that went for polling. Surat Lok Sabha constituency did not go for polling.
Also Read: Implementing a Supreme Court Judgment, Election Commission of India-Style
Earlier ECI told the SC that it was not bound by law to make Form 17C available to the citizenry. It’s assumed that political parties and candidates ought to have those forms that tell the gross number of votes polled in each booth. That may well be. But the ECI’s refusal divulge the data to the citizens raises serious questions:
What about a citizen who is neither a candidate nor a political party?
Is she not entitled to know?
Is the media not entitled to know the data to be able to inform the citizenry?
Is our electoral process a game played exclusively among political parties and the ECI?
Who is the fundamental stake holder in this entire process?
Is it not the common citizen of this country?
Is the citizenry not the ultimate sovereign of the country to whom every constitutional body ought to be accountable?
Is the ECI not required to be accountable and transparent?
Why should it be reluctant to make Form 17C data and any other information public for citizens to scrutinise?
Why did the government of the day perpetrate opaqueness by changing the norms governing the Information Commission?
Why did the government in ‘consultation with the ECI’ hastily amend the Conduct of Election Rules and make crucial records of election process unavailable for scrutiny by the citizens?
Citizens in a democracy are entitled to a system that adheres to the essential principles of electoral democracy. This is a non-negotiable requirement to maintain the integrity of electoral process. Any act of commission or omission that compromises the fulfillment of this entitlement or subverts it is unacceptable.
Parakala Prabhakar is a political economist and author of The Crooked Timber of New India.
MG Devasahayam, formerly of the IAS, is Coordinator of Citizens Commission on Elections.
