Almost all parties in favour of EVMs
Political parties on Monday prevailed on the the Election Commission(EC) to address all their fears over the use of Electronic Voting Machines(EVMs). The EC, which met with all political parties to discuss four issues namely — the use of Electronic Voting Machines(EVMs), the phenomenon of paid news, the use of money power in
elections and the criminalisation of politics, heard their views. Barring the Telangana Rashtriya Samiti(TRS), almost all the parties were in favour of using the EVMs, though they all demanded that the concerns raised over the efficacy of the EVMs should be addressed. The main Opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) made two suggestions — holding simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and all Vidhan Sabhas and state funding of elections.
The EC met the national parties during the fore-noon and the regional parties in the afternoon to elicit their views on these four issues. The Congress which was represented by its party spokesperson, Ms Jayanthi Natrajan, said, “we had fruitful and productive discussions. All of us are united on many issues. But on some issues there are minor differences.” The BJP and the Telugu Desam Party(TDP) favoured a “paper trial” as an acknowledgement that the vote has been cast in favour a particular candidate. Mr Ravi Shankar Prasad said, “this concept should be launched as a pilot project and could be extended to the whole of India.” Mr Chandrababu Naidu of the TDP said, “confusion and doubts over the use of EVMs need to be cleared as it is believed it could be tampered with. And also voters should get a print-out as a mark of confirmation that their vote has cast in favour of a particular candidate.” Nilotpal Basu of the CPI(M) is of the view that whatever needs to be done to allay the fears, should be done.
D. Raja of the CPI said the EC should take steps to enhance the confidence of the people over the use of EVMs.
The TRS representative and former MP Vinod Kumar said his party’s first preference is ballot papers. He said, “our first preference is balot papers.”
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