The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has continuously been questioning the authenticity of Electronic Voting Machines after its defeat in the Punjab state elections and has been asking the Election Commission (EC) to verify the votes cast in elections with the data of paper trail.
The Election Commission has slammed AAP and asked the party to introspect and try to understand why the public has not shown faith in them. The EC has also given a hint to AAP that it can try the option of going to the High Court and file an election petition if it wants to verify the votes cast in the election with the data of paper trail, as it’s the only option available to them.
The EC wrote a letter to AAP in which it asked the party, “to introspect as to why your party could not perform as per your expectations and it is unfair on your part to attribute unsatisfactory poll performance of your party to the alleged tamperability of EVMs.”
The EC also said that no concrete evidence had been brought into their knowledge and even nothing happened during the “mock drills” which could prove that EVMs could have been tampered. EC told AAP, “The Commission strongly objects to this wrong and imaginary extrapolation of (the) Supreme Court’s order. This may please be noted as a responsible political party.”
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The EC further added, “any surmise based on foreign studies or operating system based EVMs used elsewhere would be completely erroneous. The ECI-EVMs cannot be compared with those EVMs and ECI-EVMs are tamper-proof.”
AAP has also responded to the letter of the EC and termed it as unfortunate that the EC is giving a political answer rather than taking the much needed action to restore the faith of people in EVMs, especially after the incident that took place in Bhind, Madhya Pradesh.
Here is the letter of AAP:
“It is unfortunate that instead of taking due action, the Election Commission is issuing political statement on the issue of EVM tampering. The incident of EVM tampering in Bhind district of Madhya Pradesh, where the VVPAT enabled EVM printed BJP’s election symbol Lotus irrespective of the button pressed during a mock trial, has made it clear that Electronic Voting Machines are not tamper-proof. The incident shook the faith of millions of Indian voters in the impartiality of the Election Commission and the entire process of elections using Electronic Voting Machines.
The incident of Bhind has shown that the Election Commission has completely failed in its duty to protect the EVMs and the integrity of the election process and therefore failed in fulfilling its constitutional obligation of conducting free and fair elections.
The Aam Aadmi Party urges the Election Commission that for the sake of the institution’s dignity and credibility, it should take immediate action to restore faith of the common man in the electoral process. Turning a blind eye to the shocking reports trickling in from UP, Maharashtra, Punjab and now Madhya Pradesh would serve no purpose and would only erode the credibility of the Election Commission.”
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