EVM - Electronic Voting Machine
Free and fair elections
are central to the democratic ethos of any country. This includes fair,
accurate, and transparent electoral process with outcomes that can be
independently verified. Conventional voting accomplishes many of these goals.
However, electoral malpractices like bogus voting and booth capturing pose a
serious threat to spirit of electoral democracy. It has, thus, been the
endeavour of the Election Commission of India to make reforms in the electoral
process to ensure free and fair elections. EVMs, devised and designed by
Election Commission of India in collaboration with two Public Sector
undertakings viz., Bharat Electronics Limited, Bangalore and Electronics
Corporation of India Limited, Hyderabad, is a major step in this direction.
Electronic Voting
Machines ("EVM") are being used in Indian General and State Elections
to implement electronic voting in part from 1999 elections and in total since
2004 elections. The EVMs reduce the time in both casting a vote and declaring
the results compared to the old paper ballot system. Bogus voting and booth
capturing can be greatly reduced by the use of EVMs. Illiterate people find
EVMs easier than ballot paper system. They are easier to transport the EVMs
compared to ballot boxes.
EVM has become the
leitmotif of the world's largest democratic exercise and gets smarter with each
avatar. Here is an attempt to briefly trace the evolution of the EVM and its
use in the world’s largest democracy.
Chronological
development of EVM
v EVMs were first used in
50 polling stations of Parur Assembly Constituency of Kerala in May 1982.
v These machines could not
be used after 1983 after a Supreme Court ruling that necessitated legal backing
for the use of Voting machines in elections. The law was amended by Parliament
in December, 1988 and a new section 61A was inserted in the Representation of
the People Act, 1951 empowering the Commission to use voting machines.
The amended provision comes into force w.e.f. 15th March, 1989.
v The matter regarding use
of EVMs was referred by the Government of India to Electoral Reforms Committee,
appointed by the Central Government in February, 1990 consisting of
representatives of several recognized National and State parties.
v An Expert Committee was
constituted by the Govt. of India, consisting of Prof. S. Sampath, then
Chairman RAC, Defence Research and Development Organization, with Prof. P.V.
Indiresan, then with IIT, Delhi and Dr C. Rao Kasarabada, the Director
Electronics Research and Development Centre, Trivandrum. In its report, the
committee concluded that these machines are tamper-proof.
v On 24th March, 1992,
necessary amendment to the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961 was notified by the
Government in the Ministry of Law and Justice.
v The Commission again
constituted Technical Expert Committee in December, 2005 comprising Prof. P.V.
Indiresan, Prof. D.T. Shahani of IIT Delhi and Prof. A.K. Agarwala of IIT Delhi
to get the new version EVMs evaluated before finally accepting these machines
for actual use in elections.
v Subsequently, the
Commission has been consulting a group of technical experts comprising Prof.
(Late) P.V. Indiresan (member of the earlier committee), Prof. D.T. Shahani and
Prof. A.K. Agarwala of IIT Delhi, on all EVM related technical issues. In
November, 2010, the Commission has expanded its Technical Expert Committee by
including two more experts, namely, Prof D.K. Sharma from Department of
Electrical Engineering, IIT of Mumbai and Prof. Rajat Moona from Department of
Computer Science and Engineering, IIT of Kanpur (now Director General, C-DAC).
v Since, November 1998,
EVMs have been using in each and every general/bye elections to Parliamentary
and Assembly Constituency. India turned into an e-democracy in General
Elections 2004 when 10.75 lakh EVMs were used across all polling Stations in
the country. Since then, all elections were conducted by EVMs .
Salient Features of EVMs:
v It is tamper proof &
simple to operate
v Program which controls
the functioning of the control unit is burnt into a micro chip on a “one time
programmable basis”. Once burnt it cannot be read, copied out or altered.
v Eliminates the
possibility of invalid votes, makes the counting process faster and reduces the
cost of printing.
v An EVM can be used in
areas without electricity as it runs on alkaline batteries.
v Elections can be
conducted through EVMs if the number of candidates does not exceed 64.
v An EVM can record a
maximum number of 3840 votes.
No comments:
Post a Comment