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Indian Supreme Court pulls up poll panel, gov't over delay in using upgraded e-voting machines

Xinhua, April 13, 2017 Adjust font size:

India's Supreme Court on Thursday pulled up the country's Election Commission and the central government over the delay in switching to upgraded electronic voting machines (EVM) that provide a paper receipt once a vote is cast.

The court issued notices to the Election Commission and the Indian government, seeking their responses by May 8, the next date of hearing of the case, filed by opposition parties, mainly the Congress and the regional Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

During the arguments, senior advocate and former Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, who appeared for the BSP, told judges that despite the Supreme Court's order in 2013, EVMs with paper trails have not been used for elections, which creates a serious doubt about the accuracy of voting.

"There is no way that a voter can verify as to whether the vote cast by him has gone to the right candidate. Without a paper trail, there is no way to verify it. In EVMs, a voter is only pressing the button and he does not know if the machine is recording his voting correctly or not," he said.

Another former Indian Minister and senior lawyer Kapil Sibal, who appeared for the main opposition Congress, was, however, reprimanded by the top court for stating that no other country, except South America, uses EVMs.

"Sibal, your party (Congress) only introduced EVMs. How can you say no other country uses it. EVMs are remedy to booth capturing and other ills," the court said.

The country's opposition parties have filed the case after the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's landslide win in assembly polls in the northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, where they allege EVMs were manipulated in favor of the BJP.

The Election Commission has clearly rejected the accusations and said that it will hold a hackathon in May to prove that the voting machines in use can not be manipulated.

India uses about 1.4 million EVMs in each general election to cover the vast country, from the Himalayas down to Kanyakumari on the southern tip.

India has an electorate of more than 668 million, covering 543 parliamentary constituencies. Endit