Totaliser system: Centre fears data leak; SC asks EC to respond
Satya Prakash
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, March 5
The Supreme Court on Monday gave the Election Commission two weeks to respond to central government’s apprehensions that totaliser system of counting could lead to data being leaked from Eectronic Voting Machines (EVMs) before votes are counted.
The Election Commission told a three-judge Bench headed Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra that it supported the demand to have the totaliser system of counting votes replace booth-wise counting to ensure non-disclosure of voting pattern at a particular booth. It said that the demand to replace the existing system of voting was part of its electoral reforms.
The central government however argued that most political parties were opposed to mixing EVMs before counting votes.
Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, appearing for a petitioner, said Rule 59A of the Conduct of Election Rules of 1961, allowed mixing of ballots before counting when the Election Commission suspects voter intimidation and believes it absolutely necessary to take the ballot papers out of the boxes and mix it up before counting.
When CJI asked Additional Solicitor General Maninder Singh why the central government was hesitant to amend rules, Singh said that the Centre was willing to remove “bottlenecks in the election process”, but there was the risk of “outflow of data from the EVM before it is even opened”.
“If ‘totaliser’ is permitted, who would tackle the risk? Let the Election Commission respond to this concern,” Singh said.
The Bench asked the Election Commission to give the Centre all the relevant documents related to its recommendation on the mixing of EVMs before the counting of votes to eliminate the information regarding voting pattern at a particular polling booth.
The commission will have to ensure that there was no leakage of data or tampering of the machines and their genuineness was kept intact.
The court was hearing a PIL that asks for totalizer machines to be used to count votes.
What is a totaliser?
The totaliser is a machine that is used in addition with the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) meant to facilitate the counting of the votes. The machine can collate votes of 14 EVMs simultaneously.
