India will try out the Brazilian model of voting in future

The technology called Voter Verifiable Paper Trail (VVPT), a supplement to the existing EVM system, will be piloted in some polling stations in near future.

"We’ll experiment VVPT in 200 polling stations in places with extreme weather conditions like Ladakh in the presence of all political parties. If they approve, this can be a reality in future,” chief election commissioner SY Quraishi told journalists at a press conference after emerging from the 7th Regional Consultation for Electoral Reforms held in Guwahati on Sunday.

VVPT includes a printed ballot as a receipt which a voter can view to verify his or her vote before leaving an EVM. The method can ensure the accuracy of recorded votes by allowing the tally to be checked later by counting the collected receipts.

The deliberations on Sunday were mainly on the criminalisation of politics, financing of elections, conduct and better management of elections, regulating political parties, auditing of finances of political parties, adjudication of election disputes and the review of anti-defection laws.

“We’ve now got the pulse of the people. The proposals will come up before the government and the Parliament,” Quraishi said.

Union law minister Veerappa Moily said the process of consultations, which started in September last year and held in seven cities, were a ‘unique experiment’.

“We need to work hard to ensure that the constitutional aspirations are put in place…Our roadmap has to be explored and corrected,” he said.

Moily said elections were the hallmark of any discipline and enlightened democracy and as such “if the (election) process falters, the very edifice of democracy will fail”.

The minister said the focus of the entire process of consultations was to ‘give voice to millions of people in the country’.

A proposal emerging from the deliberations was that a candidate should be barred from contesting elections the next time if there were huge dissimilarities in assets and properties as indicated by him in his affidavit in the previous elections.

“The idea is to eradicate corruption at the roots,” Moily said. He insisted that the fear of law had to be injected in the minds of lawmakers.

After the seventh and final consultations, the Commission will now prepare the draft and invite suggestions before submitting it to the Cabinet. The Cabinet Standing Committee will then ask for objections, if any. Moily said the draft would be placed before the Parliament by December next.