The complaints of EVM malfunctioning once again surfaced during the recent by-elections. As soon as voting began reports of EVM malfunctioning started pouring in from various polling stations. It forced election commission (EC) to order re-poll in 73 polling stations in Uttar Pradesh’s Kairana, 49 polling stations in Maharashtra’s Bhandara-Gondia and one polling station in Nagaland after VVPAT machines developed snags during yesterday’s Lok Sabha bypolls. EC also announced that wherever necessary, the faulty machines are being changed.
The opposition parties have been strongly demanding for scrapping EVM system and going back to ballot paper system. They have been alleging that EVM machines are faulty and can be easily hacked. Parties like BSP and AAP are at the forefront demanding scrapping of EVM system of voting. Even though the allegation of opposition is political in nature but fact of the matter is that in recent year there has been drastic rise in number of complaints about EVM malfunctioning. The election commission has failed to address this concern. Instead it keeps on giving bizarre explanation for failure of EVM. For example in the recent case, EC claimed that due to extreme heat EVM developed snag. It is an absurd explanation considering the fact that in the past general elections have been held in the month of May during extreme heat wave condition. Therefore onus lies with the election commission to win the trust of people of India and political parties.