EVMs impossible to tamper with, say engineers

Rachna Khaira

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, December 12

They are young, and are responsible to get the municipal elections conducted in a ‘fair’ manner. Meet the EVM engineers, a group of six young men from Delhi, who came to the city today to take care of any technical snag reported in any EVM on the polling day.

“Our life is as interesting as that of any candidate contesting the elections. We do have our own moments of panic and anxiety when any snag occurred in any of EVM ,” said Rituraj Pratap Singh, an engineer from ECIL Ltd, who, along with his team, was hurled stones at by voters in Municipal Corporation elections held in Meerut last month. They said their job got sensitive in case a party won by a huge margin. Also, their capability to assess the voting trend adds up further trouble.

“While majority of the voters generally lie about their choice of candidate when asked at the booth, our machines do not. We came to know the actual trend just by looking at the machine and its voting buttons. The one pressed the maximum times will be ‘different’ from others,” said another engineer adding that this is the reason why the candidates who lose accuses a ‘tampered’ EVM as the result do not match with the feedback provided by the voters on the spot. They said other factors like voters seeking their help to cast vote during any snag or their interaction with voters at the booth, adds up to assess the voting trend more accurately. The engineers supported the claim that EVMs are impossible to tamper with and the process from which it gets through and reaches the booth itself is tampered- proof. The district administration today carried out the first-level sealing of the EVMs at various centres in the presence of the representatives of the relevant parties. The team scattered across and checked all 2,400 EVMs including the reserve stock and did the first-level sealing of around 700 EVMs today.

“The second level sealing will be done an hour before the polls where an officer will seal the entire machines,” said Rituraj. But how come the candidates will know that the same machines sealed by the EVM team are getting used in various booths? “Each of the EVM is having a serial number which has been given to each candidate at the time of sealing. The candidate can get the machine checked at each of the polling booth in his area,” said Rinku K R Sisodia, another engineer.

EVM machines to have photos of candidates

For the first time in Local Bodies elections of Punjab, the ballot papers to be installed in the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) for voting in elections for municipal bodies would have the photographs of the candidates contesting from the ward. Deputy Commissioner Varinder Kumar Sharma who is also the chief electoral officer said the move would enable the voters to cast their votes to their preferred candidate without any confusion. It is for the first time that the initiative has been taken in the state. A total of 900 EVMs would be used for the elections with the photographs of the candidates on ballot papers, facilitating the voters to cast their vote without any confusion in case two or more candidates have the same name. The Election Commission had noted that there were many cases where candidates with same or similar names contested from the same constituency due to which voters had to face confusion in casting their vote.