Political parties raises cause of concern over placing VVPATs between EVMs and CUs

CHENNAI: Political parties in Tamil Nadu raised a cause of concern over the idea of sandwiching the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) between Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) and Control Unit during the meeting with Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar, who was here to hold series of meetings with stakeholders on election preparedness for the Lok Sabha polls.

The representatives of the Dravidian major and other political parties urged the (CEC) to deploy additional force in sensitive booths and sanitise the voters' list to weed out duplicate entries and ensure the eligible voters were not missed out.

Representatives of DMK and its allies, left parties, flagged the issue of placing VVPAT between the EVM and CU and echoed that it would introduce vulnerability and compromise the biggest defence of the sacrosanct nature of the EVM.

The Election Commission of India had admitted that placing VVPAT between EVM and CU would lead to a 2% error in voting, which would account for around 40,000 votes in each Parliamentary constituency. Using sequence would create an opportunity for tampering with the system. The authorities should refrain from such practice, said senior DMK leader and former member of Rajya Sabha R S Bharathi, who along with Rajya MP N R Elango, attended the meeting with the CEC to register the party's suggestions regarding election preparedness. They have submitted a petition regarding the issue to the CEC.

‘Engage private firms to fix CCTVs’

Senior AIADMK leader and former minister D Jayakumar emphasised on stepping up security measures in sensitive booths and ensuring the upkeep of the footage of such booths. He also urged the CEC to engage private firms, which are politically neutral, in election works such as installing CCTVs in polling booths and counting centres. He also urged the CEC to guarantee no eligible voters' were left out and double entries in the voters' list should be removed.

BJP functionary Karate Thiagarajan said that CCTVs should be installed in all the booths and demanded paramilitary force in sensitive booths. Elections should be conducted peacefully without law and order issues and the senior police officers, who were acting in favour of the ruling party in the state, should be identified and advised to ensure free and fair polls.

Representatives of the left parties insisted that the sequence of the voting process for issues of VVPATs must be in the order of Ballot Units-Control Unit and then the VVPAT receipt.

The ECI should ensure "100% VVPAT receipts are to be provided to all those who had voted", said State Secretary of the party K Balakrishnan in the representation, while R Muthurasan of CPI said that there was a strong discontent and doubts. EVMs' votes should be verified by counting VVPATs.