& çâÌæÚUæð´ ·¤è ¥ôÚU Îð¹Ùæ ÁæÚUè ÚU¹ð´ ¥ÍæüÌ ¥ÂÙð ÜÿØ ÂÚU ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´Ð ãæÚU Ù ×æÙð´, €UØô´ç·¤ ·¤æ× ·¤ÚUÙð âð ¥æÂ·¤ô ©gðàØ ·¤è Âýæç# ãôÌè ãñ ¥õÚU ÁèßÙ ·¤æ ¹æÜèÂÙ ÎêÚU ãôÌæ ãñÐ ÖÜð ãè ÁèßÙ ×ð´ ç·¤ÌÙè Öè ·¤çÆÙæ§ü €UØô´ Ù ¥æ°, çÁ™ææâæ ¥õÚU ©ˆâæã ÕÙæ° ÚU¹ð´Ð ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´, ÜÿØ ã×ðàææ ¥æÂ·Ô¤ Âæâ ãôÌð ãñ´ çÁ‹ãð´ ÂæÙð ·Ô¤ çÜ° ÂýØæâ ¥æÂ ·¤Öè Öè àæéM¤ ·¤ÚU â·¤Ìð ãñ´Ð

Not an easy job

Shakhawat Liton
It took decades for the Indian Election Commission to accomplish the Herculean task of introducing electronic voting machines across the country for parliamentary elections.
The idea of EVM was first mooted by the commission in 1977. EVMs were first used as an experiment at some polling stations of a constituency in Kerala state assembly election in 1982.
The commission continued to use the machines in several other state elections on a small scale.
Finally in 1998, a general consensus was made on the use of EVMs in
Indian elections and the devices were used in state assembly elections of 16 constituencies across the states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Delhi, accordingto a recent EC report.
A year later, EVM use expanded to 46 constituencies in the parliamentary election. In February 2000, the machines were used in 45 constituencies of Haryana state assembly polls.
Expansion of EVM use reached a milestone in 2001. State assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry, and West Bengal shunned the paper ballots altogether. All state assembly elections have been doing the same since then.
Buoyed by the success, the EC dreamt big and used EVMs in all 543 during the LokSabha election in 2004.
Since 2000, India has witnessed 113 state assembly elections and three Lok Sabha elections in 2004, 2009, and 2014 where polling relied on EVMs, said the EC's latest report styled "Status Paper on Electronic Voting Machine” published this month.
During the last parliamentary polls in 2014, a whopping 1.4 million EVMs were used in around one million polling stations across the country.
The EC's journey over the years was not a smooth one. Over a dozen cases were filed challenging the legality of using EVMs. Several technical expert committees were formed to evaluate EVM's effectiveness. The EC had to hold a series of meetings with political parties to allay suspicion and doubt about the device.
The EC has been continuously promoting the quality of the EVMs, saying it is not possible to tamper with the machines because of technological measures and strict administrative and security measures taken by the commission.
The EVMs are protected from tampering before, during and after the polls and during transportation from manufacturing company to the state or district, or from one state to another, said the EC in the report.
"Since the very inception of the EVMs in 1982, as a positive electoral reform on the electoral scene in India, blames and aspersions have been cast on the EVMs from various quarters including political," the report reads.
After the announcement of the results of the five state assembly elections in March 2017, allegations were levelled against EVMs. A delegation 13 political parties met the commission
on April 10, 2017 and expressed reservations about EVM use.
Since the ruling BJP's sweeping victory in Uttar Pradesh state assembly elections in 2017, Mayawati, along with Aam Aadmi Party, had been alleging that the EVMs were manipulated.
The EC then challenged anyone to hack into a machine.
As many as 16 parties, including Samajwadi Party (SP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Trinamool Congress (TMC), came together in early August to raise concern over EVMs.
At an all-party meeting convened by the EC last week, the opposition parties asked why in every instance of EVM malfunction, the votes went to only one party and demanded the EC to hand them over the name and address of firms that repaired the machines.
The meeting was attended by representatives of BJP, opposition Congress, Trinamool Congress, Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party, CPI, CPI (M) and Nationalist Congress Party and 51 state parties to reach political consensus on the issue just a few months ahead of a general election.
The EC said it would provide "satisfactory solution" to the concerns raised by the political parties over EVMs.
EXPERIENCE OF OTHER COUNTRIES
The EC report said EVMs were used in The Netherlands between 1990 and 2007. The machines were manufactured by a private company. In 2006, a pressure group called "We Don't Trust Voting Computers" demonstrated the security flaws in voting machines. Following the demonstration, the government ordered an independent testing of the voting machines. TXvo independent commissions were established to review the security and reliability features of the machines manufactured by the company. After the reviews, the electronic voting was discontinued in 2007.
In Germany, e-voting machines manufactured by a Dutch company were used between 2005 and 2009 before it came under criticism and were discontinued. The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany ordered the discontinuation in 2009.
The court order concluded that a computer-based system of voting required knowledge of programming that citizens did not have and, hence, the system was “opaque". This defeated the constitutional requirement of public examinability of all essential
steps in an election.
In Ireland, the EVM machines manufactured by a Dutch company were used in between 2002 and 2004. Use of these machines was questioned there as well.
Two independent commissions formed in this regard concluded the machines could not be used in elections in Ireland for inadequate technological safeguards, insecure transfer of data by the use of CDs, absence of a comprehensive independent end-to-end testing, verification and certification by a single accredited body.
Not many countries use the EVM. According to a report by the Economic Times on May 14 this year "as of now, 31 countries used or studied EVMs. Only four use it nationwide, 11 use EVMs in some parts. Pilots are on in five nations. Three nations have discontinued it while 11, which ran pilots, decided against electronic voting."
In Bangladesh, the EC used EVMs in a very limited scale in several local government elections in recent years. But only a few months ahead of the national polls, the EC has now suddenly decided to use EVMs in 100 parliamentary constituencies triggering widespread controversies.