"There will be no going back to ballot papers," Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora said definitively on Thursday. "...I would like to make it very, very clear once more. In fact, it is not I, it is the entire ECI, it is the ECIs of the past, and it will be the ECIs of the future... we are not going back to the era of ballot papers."
Arora's assertion comes a day after several political parties, based on the revelations by US-based hacker Syed Shuja, raised doubts about the efficacy of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).
Asserting that the Election Commission of India (ECI) will not be "intimidated or bullied or coerced" into giving up the EVMs, Arora said, "...my simple question is that (why is it that) if the result is X, the EVM is right and the result turns out to be Y, the EVM is faulted. Why have we made a machine, and that too manufactured under highly secured conditions by the two Public Sector Undertakings..."
Arora pointed out that some of the country's foremost technocrats and scientists oversee every aspect of the manufacturing process of EVMS and VVPATs (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail), which is undertaken by Bharat Electronics Ltd and Electronics Corporation of India Ltd.
The remarks were made at an international conference on 'Making our Elections Inclusive & Accessible' in the capital ahead of National Voters Day on Friday.
After Shuja's claims, several political parties, including Congress, Trinamool Congress and Samajwadi Party etc reignited the EVM debate. Making a veiled reference to them, Arora lamented that EVMs are being used as a "football" in a game of "motivated slugfest".
Raising the spectre of ballot paper, Arora reminded how the era was marked by lifting of votes, hiring of muscle men for security, delay in counting and harassment of polling staff.
Giving the example of recent elections in five states, the CEC pointed out that only six contentious instances were reported out of 1,76,000 booths.
"We are not averse to any learning," he emphasized, "but are open to criticism, feedback, from stakeholders, including the political parties because they are the biggest stakeholders." This can be read as increasing the ratio of matching VVPAT slips with corresponding EVMs.
