Don’t threaten the sanctity of the EC
from a constituency that the BJP had won. When the chief election commissioner of Madhya Pradesh told journalists that the bypolls will be free and fair, reporters asked her why one of the machines couldn’t be tested to ensure this happened. She was confident that going by the standard operating process of the Commission the memory of the machine would have been washed. But owing to someone’s callousness this hadn’t happened. So, the lotus symbol emerged when the button was pressed. When reporters asked for a clarification, instead of making things clear, the officer threatened to have them arrested if word got out. That was when things went awry.
After the incident, the Election Commission must learn a lesson: it should ensure 100% implementation of all parameters of the electoral process. Those officers violating this should be given the strictest punishment. At the same time, to make its functioning more transparent, the Election Commission had demanded the facility of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) with every EVM. The Centre has sanctioned a sum of ₹3,174 crore for this. It is an auspicious signal.
It is believed that the results in those five states where the EVMs already had VVPATs installed were analysed after the assembly polls. The analysis showed that the votes polled were in the same ratio as the final verdict. For instance, the machines registered more voting for the Congress in Punjab and the BJP in Uttar Pradesh. Is this fact not enough to remove the misconceptions in the minds of those making wild allegations? They are themselves not without blemish.
Here I must request self-styled social media stalwarts not to fire missiles of words without thinking about consequences. The generations before us have refined our conventions time and again to make sure that the sanctity of these institutions is maintained after a lot of deliberation. We have no right to shatter it.