As voting for the Lok Sabha elections began on that day, the Aam Aadmi Party State convenor, who is also the candidate from South Goa, tweeted that in the mock poll before polling could begin, nine votes were cast for each of the six candidates in a certain booth, but the count showed the BJP got 17, Congress got nine, AAP got eight and Independent one. The EVM was replaced and polling continued. Later in the evening, the CEO at the press conference, when queried about the incident merely said, “Though the EVMs worked fine during second mock drill, we decided to change the entire set immediately.” It was almost dismissive of the incident, that had almost all of Goa talking during the day.
On Friday, the CEO issued a statement where he acknowledged that the EVM malfunctioned, but got entangled in polemics when he said, “It is abundantly clarified that the allegations of 17 votes being cast for the BJP candidate during the first mock poll with the defective machine is completely false, misleading and factually not correct. In fact, during the said mock poll, 17 votes were recorded in favour of Indian National Congress (INC) candidate Cosme Francisco Caitano Sardinha.” Strange, that it took the CEO three full days after the poll to realise that the extra votes were polled for Congress and not for the BJP, and they felt the need to release a statement. Didn’t they realise this that same Tuesday morning? Congress has expectedly dismissed this statement of the CEO, alleging that the CEO is behaving ‘like an agent of the BJP’.
That apart, this leads to a further question: What exactly was the CEO attempting to clarify with this statement? The main thing that he managed to achieve is prove beyond doubt that these electronic voting machines are unreliable and that the votes polled can be transferred to another party. By his statement, he clarified the doubts that the common man has on the reliability of the EVMs. Yes, we now know that these machines cannot be fully trusted with our precious votes. So the people call for the voter verifiable paper trail to be counted so that there is an accurate result. We cannot wait for the next election for the VVPAT slips to be counted. It has to be done this time. If the result that the EVM gives on counting day, is not matched by the paper trail, how can this election be considered to be free and fair?
There have been allegations made throughout the polling process across India that the EVMs can be tampered with. This has been rejected by the Election Commission of India, but political parties have gone to the Supreme Court with a petition seeking that at least 50 per cent of the EVMs in each constituency are matched with the paper trail. The Cuncolim incident, and now this statement by the CEO, prove beyond doubt that the EVM is not as dependable as it is made out to be.
The CEO should have maintained his neutrality in this matter. The issue at stake is not which party polled extra votes in the mock poll. The crux of the matter is that the votes got transferred. That shouldn’t have happened. That it did, tells us that the voters cannot trust the machines. Can the CEO address this issue? We would like to be clear on this aspect. This is one doubt that the CEO has not been able to clarify. On the other hand, it has increased the doubts.
