Rahul Mehta Gandhinagar LsCandidate
Supreme Court questions center's indecision on issue of disclosure boothwise vote counting results !! Well, unless EVMs are removed, boothwise voting will become known, and SCjs in past have supported EVMs !! And now they question boothwise counting !!!.
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EVMs were first used in India in 1988 in a byelection. And they remained more or less unused. In 1996, only 12 loksabha elections used EVMs. It was ABV who insisted that EVMs be used at mass scale and in 1998, all 543 seats had EVMs.
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As long as EVMs are used, there is NO way to hide boothwise voting, unless a totalizer is used, which make vote rigging by using totalizer much easier.
In past when paper ballots were used, three booths were taken at random and these three booth's ballot boxes would be opened and the ballot were mixed before counting. Segregation was done only if counts differ by more than 1% of totals as reported by presiding officers, and the counts can have impact on result (i.e. vote difference between winner and next is too low). So boothwise voting was generally not known.
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EVMs came in 1998 and things changed. There is one EVM per booth. And so boothwise voting becomes known to MPs, MLAs etc as their counting agents are on each counting table. Also, the data is recorded. And collectors and EC have to keep the record of each booth for 1 year at least. But it was not officially given to public. In 2010, EC decided to give it to public due to RTI. Now even if EC stops giving the boothwise data to public, there is NO way EC can stop that boothwise data from reaching hands of candidates' , MPs, MLAs, CM, PM etc. And anyone who can bribe collector can also get this boothwise data from collector.
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Moral of the story is --- if EVMs stay then boothwise counts become known. And if boothwise counts have to be hidden. So my vote is to remove EVMs. Each one on his own.
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Now someone filed a PIL in 2010 in Supreme Court that boothwise data should not be disclosed. The PIL is defunct as there is no technically feasible way to stop boothwise voting from becoming known. The SCjs asked EC to clarify, the EC asked the Law Ministry to clarify, the Law Ministry asked La Commission to clarify and LAw Ministry never got back to court !! And after 4 years, SCjs are asking Law Ministry to file an answer !!
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And SCjs as always are talking vague. SCjs are not making clear what they want. SCjs support EVMs. And then SCjs want boothwise voting to remain confidential. That is technically impossible. And SCjs are supposed to answer questions, not ask questions. If Law Ministry doesnt answer for 5 long years, then SCjs should decide , give order hey feel right and close the matter. Instead SCjs keep delaying the matter and throw faults on Law Ministry.
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The new govt says "we came just 100 days back" !! Well, BJP\NaMo werent born just 100 days back. The issue that EVM makes boothwise counting open has been there for past 16 years. So BJP as political party and NaMo as person should have decided this long long back. So why should it take even 10 days to decide and close the matter? The fact that they havent decided in 100 days shows that BJP\NaMo wants to keep delaying and delaying and delaying. Anyway, lets wait for 30 more days.
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The solution I propose is to use ballot papers again, with franking machines and two round system, where second round will have preferential voting system and only 8 candidates who are first 8 in first round. I have given the details in chap-40 of rahulmehta . com / 301.htm . And bigger problem EVMs is not that votes become known, but that votes can be manipulated by remote control. see the youtube link at tinyurl . com / YouTubeEVM and my video on EVM on RightToRecallGroup YT channel.
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