People's Democracy

On The Use of EVMS

A delegation consisting of CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat, Polit Bureau member Sitaram Yechury, Secretariat member V Srinivasa Rao and a technical expert Prabir Purkayastha met the  three-member Election Commission and the technical experts committee of the Election Commission on September 7 and raised some concerns regarding the use of EVMs. They had a two hour long meeting and exchanged views. The CPI(M) raised the following points:

The following are the issues raised about the reliability of the EVMs:

1. Possibility of incorporating a Trojan horse into the chip.

2. Possibility of manipulation of chips during manufacturing, insertion and transportation stages.

3. Lack of EC control on the entire technical process of the EVMs.

4. Lack of third party check/inspection/guarantee on the programming of the chips used in the EVMs.

5. Banning the usage of EVMs in some Western countries particularly in Europe.

6. Reporting of errors in some machines and the discrepancies in the results.

Some steps that need to be taken to restore the confidence of the political parties and people on the usage of the EVMs include the following:

1. The entire manufacturing process has to be done under the control of the Election Commission and for this an exclusive technical department needs to be established.

2. Both hardware and software should be in public domain.

3. The chips manufactured by ECIL, BEL should be allowed for yearly random third party inspections either by NIC or IITs.

4. All the machines should be randomly changed from state to state and within the country in every election.

5. A verification tool should be developed and made available to all.