Indian gov't gives nod to purchase of paper trail voting machines for future elections

The Indian government on Wednesday decided to purchase paper trail machines for electronic voting machines (EVM) for use during future elections.

The move came barely a week after it was pulled by the country's Supreme Court over the delay in switching over to the upgraded EVMs.

Highly placed sources said the decision was made at a cabinet meeting, chaired by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, by giving a nod to the independent Election Commission's proposal of procuring more than 1600,000 paper trail machines to cover all polling stations in the country.

Last Thursday, the Supreme Court had pulled up the Election Commission and the central government over the delay in switching to upgraded EVMs that provide a paper receipt once a vote is cast.

The court had even 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), demanding a return to old-school ballot papers.

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 are not 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.

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 in May, it will prove that the voting machines in use cannot be manipulated. Endit