The controversy over the manipulation of the EVMs hit ground when Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati claimed that the machines were tampered with during the Uttar Pradesh (UP) polls.
The Supreme Court on Friday issued a notice to the poll panel on a petition which alleged that the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) used in the recent Assembly elections in five states and Mumbai civic polls were manipulated. In his petition, the petitioner wanted the machines to be inspected by foreign software experts and submit a report accordingly.
A bench led by the Chief Justice of India JS Khehar along with Justices DY Chandrachud and Sanjay Kishan Kaul directed the election commission to furnish their response on this matter within four weeks.
"When tampered by the criminals for vote-stealing by changing voting numbers in favour of a political party for grabbing power, it's a fraud upon the basic structure of democratic constitutional system which is not only liable to be stopped but also investigated," the petition filed by advocate ML Sharma said.
The controversy over the manipulation of the EVMs hit ground when Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati claimed that the machines were tampered with during the Uttar Pradesh (UP) polls. These claims were echoed by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal who asserted that the EVMs were hacked into during the Punjab elections.
Mayawati insisted her party lost because the EVMs were manipulated with and not because of the lack of votes. Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) resounding win, securing 312 of the 403 seats in the UP elections were attributed to the the tampered machines.
Kejriwal alleged 20-25 per cent of the votes were transferred to the Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP alliance by way of tampered machines. Off late, Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee also weighed in this issue stating that a full-fledged discussion is warranted since the credibility of the machine has been questioned.
The Election Commission has indicated that it wants to introduce the new system called VVPAT or Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail across the country by 2019. However, the Centre has not released the requisite funds amounting to Rs 3,174 crore that the poll panel has asked for. During the debate in the Rajya Sabha, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that money was not a problem, but other issues like logistics, storage, safety and security of VVPAT machines needed to be sorted out first.
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