Making Elections inclusive and accessible, here's how CEC Arora untraps the EVMs of all its extant allegations

New Delhi, January 24: “Free, fair, transparent, credible and ethical elections are critical to the legitimacy of a democratic government. It is imperative that the voice of all categories of voters is included in democratic representation. Inclusive elections coupled with characteristics such as transparency, accountability and competitiveness add to the strength of democratic polity”, said the CEC Sunil Arora while addressing the International Conference on ‘Making our Elections Inclusive and Accessible’, inaugurated by Ashok Lavasa at the national capital today.

 

 

The ECI is hosting the conference on the occasion of 9th National Voters Day which is observed on 25th January every year. 

Speaking specifically of the Indian context, he strongly affirmed that ECI is always open to all kinds of feedback in all forms from all stakeholders particularly the political parties who are the most significant stakeholders after the voters. “ECI is not going to be intimidated, coerced or pressurized into going back to ballot papers days. The position has been consistently maintained by successive Commissions and the same will be maintained in the future. In ballot paper era there used to be innumerable complaints about impersonation and booth capturing by anti-social elements and musclemen, besides the inordinate delays in declaring results which sometimes spread from three to four days”, he added.

In context of the recent aspersions cast on EVMs used in elections, Arora denounced the targeting of machines, which unnecessarily are being dragged into motivated slugfest. Arora said, “We have kept a robust technical and administrative mechanism to safeguard the integrity of EVM. VVPATs have further enhanced the transparency of votes for the voters. EVMs have been in use for the last two decades. Even in several elections since 2014, the machines have given different results in different elections.”

He mentioned that even in the recent elections in the five States, out of a total of 176,000 Polling Booths where EVMs were used, there were six incidents of violation of Standard Operating Procedure, that too in reserved EVMs not used in the actual elections. “Although the ratio is negligible but even in these cases stringent disciplinary action was taken and ECI has and always will have zero tolerance to any kind of errors in the election process” he reiterated.