RTI Docs revealed EVM theft in Gujarat, MP and Chhattisgarh

[Bhai]

RTI documents reveal several incidents of EVM theft in Gujarat, MP and Chhattisgarh

 

 

RTI disclosure by Congress activists Tehseen and Shehzad Poonawalla comes on a day when the Election Commission informed the Supreme Court that the voting machines used in India are fully tamper proof and urged that a petition seeking discontinuation of EVMs in elections should be dismissed

In a fresh twist to the ongoing debate over the reliability and security of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), a bunch of documents accessed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act from Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh shows how ahead of various assembly and general elections since 2003, several incidents of these machines being stolen were reported.

The RTI documents accessed by Congress activists Tehseen and Shehzad Poonawalla raise one pertinent question – if EVMs can’t be tampered with then why are they repeatedly stolen? Furthermore, even those police complaints that were registered against specific individuals, including three election commission officials in Gujarat, on the charge of stealing the machines have failed to achieve conviction by any court despite charges of the theft being proven.

The RTI revelations came on a day when the Election Commission informed the Supreme Court during proceedings in a public interest litigation filed by advocate ML Sharma that not only are the EVMs used in Indian elections ‘fully tamper-proof and credible machines, which can’t be hacked’ but also that they are “better than the machines used in US, Germany, the Netherlands and Ireland”. Sharma’s petition has sought discontinuation of the EVMs on the grounds that they can be tampered with and has asked for a rollback to the paper ballot system of casting votes.

Earlier this year, the reliability of EVMs had emerged as a major political debate when during an inspection of the machines by the state’s chief electoral office Salina Singh days before a bypoll for the Ater assembly seat in Madhya Pradesh’s Bhind district, it was found that the machines were registering votes in favour of the BJP irrespective of which party it was actually being cast for.

The Poonawalla brothers also shared the documents on micro-blogging website Twitter but curiously while #EVMStolen was the top trending story for several hours on the site, receiving over 20000 tweets and re-tweets, it suddenly disappeared from the Twitter trends list by Friday afternoon.

The RTI documents, however, raise severe doubts on the tall claims put forth by the EC in its affidavit filed by the commission’s director (law), Vijay Kumar Pandey before the apex court.

Take for instance the documents accessed from Gujarat. In a correspondence dated July 21, 2008 the then chief electoral officer of the state, Vinod Kumar Babbar had written to the then Secretary, Election Commission of India, informing him of EVMs going missing from a training class of polling officials in Jamnagar district ahead of the 2007 Gujaratassembly polls.

Babbar’s letter – certainly the most damning of the RTI documents from the three states – names three trainers, Jitendra Valji Kalawadia, Shantilal Rajkotiya Patel and Suresh Kumar Nandasana, and says that they had “behaved in a careless and doubtful manner… the persons appear to have become encouraged to misuse and take away the Electronic Voting Machines”.

 

http://www.apnlive.com/india-news/rti-documents-reveal-several-incidents-evm-theft-gujarat-mp-chhattisgarh-23281

[Bhai]

 

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[alpachinao]

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[Bhai]

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[Tadika]

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