A recent post by Tesla chief Elon Musk has brought EVM machines used in the Lok Sabha elections under scrutiny. Many opposition leaders, including Rahul Gandhi, have raised concerns about the reliability of electronic voting machines (EVMs) and have called on the Election Commission to ensure their transparency or to abolish them entirely. Gandhi referenced a post by Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and chairman of the social media platform X, who discussed eliminating EVMs due to high hacking risks. Musk\u2019s response was to a post by US politician Robert F. Kennedy Jr. regarding alleged voting irregularities in Puerto Rico. EVMs in India, introduced in the 1970s, were initially promoted as essential tools to combat organized booth capturing and vote rigging. However, their reliability and transparency are now being questioned. India\u2019s vast electorate of 350 million once relied on paper ballots, a cumbersome and time-consuming method that became notorious for rigging and voter fraud. After the second consecutive defeat in the Lok Sabha election in 2009, BJP\u2019s then PM candidate L K Advani had raised questions about the credibility of the EVMs, and said that the country should go back to the older system of ballot papers. In response, the Election Commission Of India then published a full-fledged report maintaining that the machines are secure and tamper-proof. Not convinced, maverick politician Subramanian Swamy in 2012 also moved the Supreme Court on the issue, and the apex court ordered the poll panel to introduce \u201cpaper trail\u201d to EVMs throughout the country. The 2014 Lok Sabha Election saw several allegations of EVM-rigging. During a mandatory mock poll in Jorhat on April 3, 2014, every time a button was pressed, the vote went in favour of BJP. After the UP and Punjab elections, several political parties have again raised the bogey of manipulation of EVMs. The Samajwadi Party(SP) raised the issue which was supported by political foe the Bahujan Samaj Party(BSP). Both said the results were suspect as the BJP win even in Muslim dominated areas, was shocking. Besides several cases where EVMs were allegedly switched or carried in cars of candidates, EVMs have still not been wholly accepted by the losers. Airing fears of alleged fraud ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the INDIA alliance has demanded 100 per cent VVPAT verification. However, the Election Commission and former chief election commissioners reiterated that there has so far not been a single instance of a VVPAT mismatch. Voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) or verified paper record (VPR) is a method of providing feedback to voters using a ballotless voting system. A VVPAT is intended as an independent verification system for voting machines designed to allow voters to verify that their vote was cast correctly, to detect possible election fraud or malfunction, and to provide a means to audit the stored electronic results. It contains the name of the candidate (for whom vote has been cast) and symbol of the party\/individual candidate. The ongoing debate surrounding the reliability of EVMs and the necessity of VVPATs, stands as a pivotal issue, resonating deeply with the integrity of the electoral process in India. At the heart of this discourse lies the quest for transparency and trustworthiness, essential pillars upon which democracy stands. The Supreme Court needs to decide and end the matter once and for all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A recent post by Tesla chief Elon Musk has brought EVM machines used in the Lok Sabha elections under scrutiny. Many opposition leaders, including Rahul Gandhi, have raised concerns about the reliability of electronic voting machines (EVMs) and have called on the Election Commission to ensure their transparency or to abolish them entirely. Gandhi referenced […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[685],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-429179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}