Addressing a group of reporters in Aurangabad in Maharashtra on Thursday, Chief Election Commissioner(CEC) O P Rawat said that the Election Commission(EC) is ready for “hundred per cent use” of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail(VVPAT) machines, reported PTI.
He informed that the EC has ordered 17.5 lakh VVPAT machines and has received 10 lakh machines yet.
CEC Rawat said, “In 2013, the Supreme Court said in one case that EVMs(Electronic Voting Machines) are good, but the voter cannot see whether the vote has gone to the candidate he/she chose, and ordered us to go back to ballot paper or provide paper trail. So, we are providing verifiable trail in all polls.”
He said that the rest of the machines will be delivered by November end, adding, “we are ready for 100 per cent use of VVPATs.”
Rawat told the journalists, “Generally, the EC starts preparing 14 months in advance. So, we began working for the 2019 Lok Sabha poll in February 2018. Midway, there will be polls for Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram (assemblies) also, but we will take them in our stride.”
On the opposition parties questioning the authenticity of the Electronic Voting Machines(EVM) and asking for resorting to paper ballot system, the CEC defended EVMs. He also said that the EC is working to ‘minimise the failure rate’ of VVPAT machines.
Defending the EVMs he said,”The understanding about EVMs is not really comprehensive. After glitches during Gondia and Kairana bypolls (this year), it was said that the EVM system was failing.”
“The error-ratio of EVMs is not more than 0.5 to 0.6 per cent, which is common in any machine. What really failed in those polls was Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail machines”, continued Rawat.
CEC added, “VVPATs were totally new and unknown. Even polling parties were trained for the first time in their use. EVMs are purely electronic machines like radio, computers or mobiles, while VVPAT is an electro-mechanical machine containing paper roll, a motor to run it, system to print and cut.” Rawat informed, “They (VVPATs) are very complicated and slight mishandling can result in failure. India has different climatic zones, and the paper used in VVPATs also decides their functioning.”
Discussing the ‘None of the Above(NOTA) option, he said that only 1.2 to 1.4 per cent of voters have used the option in the elections held so far, PTI reported.
Is Rawat ready to face a challenge to these “un-tamperable” machines directly on live TV by a panel of people like Hari K. Prasad (who was earlier arrested for exposing Indian EVMs) ?
If not, that itself would be a frank admission of refusal of transparency, therefore of dishonesty and cheating.