Doubts Persist Over EVMs: Digvijaya Singh Advocates For VVPAT Transparency

Senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh reiterated concerns about Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) on Sunday, advocating for voters to receive Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips that can subsequently be placed in ballot boxes. Singh, who has expressed distrust in EVMs since 2003, cited a video questioning the reliability of EVMs and highlighted potential vulnerabilities in their functioning.

Singh argued that EVMs lack transparency, and the embedded software dictates the outcome, raising doubts about the accuracy of the voting process. He emphasized the Opposition's longstanding demand for elections through traditional ballot papers, akin to practices in developed countries. Singh suggested that the time-consuming counting process associated with ballot papers is a worthwhile trade-off for ensuring voters' confidence in the electoral outcome.

In his call for transparency, Singh proposed that if Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Election Commission value EVMs, they should display and hand over the VVPAT slips to political parties for scrutiny. Faced with the Election Commission's purported unavailability for a meeting on this matter, Singh contemplated the options of approaching the Supreme Court or taking to the streets to protest against EVMs, calling for decisive action by political parties, especially those aligned under the 'INDIA' bloc.

Responding to lawyer Prashant Bhushan's post, Singh questioned the trustworthiness of the software governing EVMs and urged the Election Commission to make the software public. His remarks follow the 'INDIA' bloc's collective assertion of doubts regarding EVM integrity and the suggestion to hand over VVPAT slips to voters for scrutiny.

The Election Commission, on its part, mandates the verification of printed VVPAT slips in a random selection of polling stations before declaring results in elections to the House of the People.