CHENNAI: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, N Chandrababu Naidu, has urged the Election Commission of India (ECI) to take steps to counter-check, at least, 50% of VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail) slips with EVM (Electronic Voting Machine) results.
Addressing presspersons at the DMK headquarters Anna Arivalayam on Tuesday, he said that under the regime of Narendera Modi, the country’s democracy was in danger. Modi has done injustice to and betrayed the country.
So, to protect the nation, the election is a powerful tool. But, the electoral process itself is in peril under Modi’s regime, he noted.Naidu said that out of 191 countries, only 18 (9.4%) had adopted EVMs for polling, owing to lack of adequate technological safeguards. Of the 18 countries, 10 including Germany, the Netherlands and others have stopped using EVMs because of malfunction and lack of trust. Top scientists have also admitted that EVMs are vulnerable to tampering, hacking, memory manipulation, alteration of software code and also programming error, he observed.
“Various experts have confirmed that EVMs can malfunction for two to six hours,” he said, adding that the ECI had also agreed on that point.In the recent election in Andra Pradesh, EVMs malfunctioned for two to six hours and as a result, voters returned without exercising their franchise. It was an infringement of voting right. In a total of 13 districts, polling continued even into the late night due to malfunctioning of EVMs.
In numerous instances, VVPAT slips were shown only for three seconds, instead of the mandatory seven seconds, he said, adding that hence, the ECI should take measures to counter-check, at least, 50 per cent of VVPAT slips with EVM results.
Speaking on the response of the ECI to his demand, Naidu said, “In response to the petition filed by 23 political parties, the Election Commission made a misleading statement before the Supreme Court that counting for one Assembly constituency would take, at least, six days. Even when paper ballots were used in the past, vote counting was, at most, done in 24 hours.”
Slamming the BJP-AIADMK alliance in Tamil Nadu, Naidu said that voting for the AIADMK candidate would amount to voting for Modi. Hence, in order to protect democracy, the Tamil Nadu voters should support the DMK and its allies, he said.
On the income tax raids conducted on opposition leaders’ premises recently, the Andhra Pradsesh CM said, “Income tax raids were conducted only against DMK, Telugu Desam and (Karnataka Chief Minister) HD Kumaraswamy. Are there any raids in BJP-ruled States?”