Parl panel to ask experts to test authenticity of voting machines

After several leaders cast doubts over the authenticity of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMS) in elections, a parliamentary panel has decided to invite Indian and international experts to examine if they can be tampered with.

The latest to cast doubts was Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal who on Tuesday instructed his chief secretary to urge the state election office to hold municipal elections in Delhi through ballot papers. In a letter earlier in the day, Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken demanded the same, saying serious doubts have cropped up in the minds of voters about the free and fair nature of the electoral process. Hours after results of UP elections last Saturday, BSP chief Mayawati attributed her party’s debacle to the tampering of EVMS in favour of the BJP.

Although the poll panel has dismissed such concerns, the parliamentary standing committee on personnel, public grievances and law and justice has decided to re-visit the issue.

Panel chairman and senior Congress leader Anand Sharma told HT that the committee got several petitions from Maharashtra, casting doubts about the reliability of EVMS used in the recent civic polls. One of them was from a candidate in Pune who claimed to have got 29 members of his family to cast votes but the results showed he did not get a single vote. “We have got several such petitions and taken cognisance of them. We will call election commission officials and also invite experts from abroad as the chips used in the EVMS are not manufactured in India,” Sharma told HT.

EVMS were first used nationwide for the general elections in 2004 and 2009 and over 30 elections to state assemblies during the last five years.

Rahul Gandhi did not get it entirely right when he talked of organisational (structural) changes in the Congress in the face of humiliating defeats in UP and Uttarakhand.

The grand old party that has progressively looked less and less grand requires much more: motivated full-time cadres; association with grass root movements; strong leaders in regions and a central authority that permits new faces to stand up and be judged on their own strength.

Only such a strategy can give the Congress the social ground it has lacked in the Hindi heartland since Mandal destroyed its base in early 1990s. The BJP that then opposed OBC reservations has since undergone a personality change — evolving from a party of forward castes to that of backwards, specially the most backward classes. The Hindutva card it flaunts kept the forwards from straying away.

A disaster can be a benediction provided the victim has the sagacity, remarked a veteran Congressman. In the aftermath of the massive BJP win in UP and the state’s since bifurcated hilly part, it will be sagacious for the Congress to immediately start work on a grand alliance for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

“There are fewer contradictions between parties in parliamentary polls than in assembly elections,” surmised the oldguard politico. In his view, a pact would be possible with the SP and the BSP if the Congress played “a facilitator more than a claimant in seat-sharing….”

The party indeed has lessons to learn from the way it treated its allies and regional satraps such as Jaganmohan Reddy in Andhra and Karnataka’s SM Krishna who’s all set to join the BJP. His crossing will make the saffron party equally attractive for two dominant social groups — the Vokkaliga caste to which Krishna belongs and the Lingayats who look up to the BJP’S BS Yeddyurappa.

The Congress will be committing hara-kiri if it does not tie up with Deve Gowda, another Vokaligga heavyweight, in the upcoming polls in Karnataka. “Gowda can think like a mofussil politician. One has to deal with him without putting on big brother airs,” cautioned a former MP from the state.

Political alliances can do wonders — a case in point being Bihar. Given its love-hate ties with Sharad Pawar’s NCP,