THE NEXT ELECTION 

Amidst the recent hullabaloo over the results of the recent elections paticularly in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh  ,the credibility of the Election Commision of India has taken been questioned.It is ironic that the very party which is today defending the EVM’s as secure was the first to raise questions about it.Indeed after 2009 general elections it was the leaders of BJP which had even published a book highlighting the issue of hacking the EVM’S to manipulate the results.Fastforward to 2017 it is the Congress party erstwhile defender of the EVM’s in associtation with other parties that is demanding the rollback of Evm’s and asking for voting being done through ballot paper be brought back.

Many party leaders for e.g. Arvind Kejriwal of AAP have made serious allegations regarding EVM’s.Mr Kejriwal has stated that poll pundits had predicted that his party would come to power in Punjab and defended his demand for voting through ballot paper citing the example of U.S.A which votes through ballot paper.If the example of U.S.A is being taken and the opinions of poll pundits then its quite ironic as the exit polls in U.S.A. had predicted that Hillary Clinton would be the new president of U.S.A.Going by this parameter  a case can be made that the results of the presidential election of U.S.A. is incorrect.

The Election commisson has in its statement given great details about the measures it takes to ensure that the EVM’s cannot be tampered with .In a rare  strong statement borne perhaps out of frustration it has asked the political parties to hack into its EVM’s  to prove their point.It has also mentioned that it will furher seek to strenghten this technology by introducing the verifiable paper record method or the vpr method to provide feedback to voters as to whom they have voted.

While our leaders are brickering over the use of EVM’s ,Russia has asked for this very technolgy for its 2018 presidential elections.

Perhaps now an election must be held to determine whether ballot paper systems be used or EVM’s be used in elections.But the question is what mechanism should be used to contest this election.