While Bengaluru votes this summer for the five corporations of the Greater Bengaluru Authority, it will be on paper. While opting for the ballot box over the electronic voting machine, the State Election Commission claimed that the old-style stamp on paper is appropriate for local body elections as it gives voters greater confidence. It’s known that the Congress favours paper ballots. However, opposition parties in the state have termed the step retrograde and raised concerns over the increased possibility of rigging and delayed results.
As the trust-and-transparency debate goes on even a quarter century after EVMs were introduced, it’s apparent that there are pockets of mistrust over either option. While the ballot system was vulnerable to booth capturing, almost all parties have alleged technical manipulation of EVMs at one point of time or another. Several leaders have claimed that EVMs are not tamper-proof, but none has been able to prove it. The Supreme Court has cautioned against casting aspersions on the voting mechanism, as it would create distrust in the system and reduce participation.
Meanwhile, netizens have called the use of paper in the IT Capital a move backwards. For Bengaluru, setting the EVM aside holds particular irony, as it was first built and tested by the city’s Bharat Electronics. The global debate on its viability is informed by uneven adoption—while 35 countries use EVMs, 142 do not, with a few having withdrawn the machines over trust issues.
The much-awaited civic election will be a litmus test for the Congress government and its policies, particularly for Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar, who holds the Bengaluru development portfolio. The city has traditionally voted BJP, with 16 of the 27 assembly seats and all four parliamentary constituencies in the saffron party’s kitty. But local body polls in Bengaluru were last held in 2015, and the city has transformed in the intervening decade. Run by a team of bureaucrats for the last five years, it has grown exponentially. Its registered 88.9 lakh voters will finally get to have a say on roads, potholes, traffic, garbage disposal, flooding and amenities, besides issues like demolitions, migrants and housing. Ballots or EVMs, it should be a free and fair election that brings in a well-informed leadership which puts the city’s interests over their own.