BENGALURU: In a scathing indictment of the Election Commission of India (ECI), retired senior IAS officer and election reform advocate M G Devasahayam has questioned the credibility and sanctity of a survey commissioned by the poll body to assess public trust in elections and EVMs, calling it an exercise by an “interested party” to certify itself.
Speaking to The New Indian Express, Devasahayam, coordinator of the Citizens’ Commission on Elections (CCE), said, “How can the Election Commission commission a survey about itself? What credibility can such a survey have?”
He pointed to the timing and manner of its release, noting that the survey was conducted nearly a year after elections and selectively shared with the media six months later. “What sanctity does it hold?” he asked. Raising alarm over public concerns about “spurious injection of votes”, Devasahayam demanded that the ECI first answer questions about the lakhs of votes spuriously added.
He said a scrutiny of the survey’s methodology, particularly the nature of questions asked, needs to be explained and said, “If anyone asks a leading question will they not get the answer they are seeking?” He also slammed the minuscule sample size -- just 50 voters per Assembly constituency where there are 2 lakh voters or parliamentary seats where there are about 20 lakh voters -- calling it grossly inadequate to reflect ground realities.
He alleged that the agency which conducted the survey is headed by an individual linked to the Prime Minister’s Office and the RSS grassroots network. “What fairness or objectivity can we expect?” he asked.
A long-time critic of opaque EVM systems, Devasahayam renewed his call for verifiable paper ballots and greater accountability, as debates over electoral transparency and institutional independence intensify nationwide.
Prof Kaushik Majumdar, Systems Science and Informatics Unit, Computer and Communication Sciences Division, Indian Statistical Institute, Bengaluru centre, said, “It is essential to retain and count the verifiable slip of each voter after casting the vote.
Because of technological opaqueness of electronic voting to the general voters, the German supreme court judged electronic voting unconstitutional in 2009. While this is so in much more technologically advanced democracies, conventional paper ballot voting continues to be followed for the reason that every voter has the right to be convinced about all the steps in the entire election process.’’