10/01/2024
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REPORT OF THE CITIZENS’ COMMISSION ON ELECTIONS VOLUME- I
CITIZENS’ COMMISSION ON ELECTIONS
Chairperson:- Justice (retd) Madan B. Lokur, former Supreme Court Judge
The Citizens’ Commission on Elections (CCE), a group of experts including retired judges, bureaucrats and professors, on 30 January, Saturday, released a report highlighting serious concerns related to EVM-VVPAT. At the same time, the report – ‘Is the Indian EVM and VVPAT System Fit For Democratic Elections?’ – makes recommendations to overcome these concerns.
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There is another serious dimension to this problem. Under the ballot paper system, the ECI had full control and supervision over the manufacturing of ballot-boxes, printing of ballot-papers its despatch and counting of votes. Not so with EVMs. Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), Bengaluru, and the Electronic Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), Hyderabad, manufacture EVMs and they are not under the control or supervision of the ECI. Instead, they are under the direct control of the Union Government headed by a Minister from the ruling party. These entities share the confidential software programme with foreign chip manufacturers to copy it on to micro-controllers used in the EVMs. When these foreign companies deliver micro-controllers fused with software code to the EVM manufacturers, neither the manufacturer nor the ECI officials nor the technical advisers can read back their contents because they are locked. What is worse, even the PSUs seem to have lost control of EVMs on election duty and private engineers have taken over the critical tasks of checking and maintaining EVMs and VVPATs, starting from First Level Checking till the end of counting. It is clear, therefore, that EVM voting does not comply with any of the ‘democracy principles’ which are paramount.
