2019 Lok Sabha Election EVMs Handled 99% By Private Engineers? (image-twitter/ECISVEEP)
Nearing to 2024 Lok Sabha election, the INDIA bloc has recently raised certain questions regarding the credibility of the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) to the Election Commission. When looking deeply into the cited concern, The Quint has reported in 2019 alleging the engagement of private companies in handling EVM during the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
The Election Commission (EC) claimed that no private engineers handled EVM and Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines and neither did they engage to check and maintain the machines during the elections, was busted by the news web portal.
As per the report, the Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) which were responsible for manufacturing EVMs for the EC, have engaged a Mumbai based private company M/s T&M Services Consulting Private Limited to provide consulting engineers to handle these machines during the election. But as per the website of ECIL, the company is not included in the list of approved cooperate vendors enrolled with it since 2015.
In further investigation, they found that the private engineers engaged were on payrolls of the private company.
When quizzed about the engaging of engineers who are not empaneled with them to the EC, he replied that “M/s T&M Services Consulting Private Limited is the only man power supplier” which is contradicting to the ECIL’s websites information.
The report also says that the private consulting engineers provided were not on the payroll of ECIL but of the private company and only the one who were deployed for first-level checking was given payroll directly from the ECIL.
99% of the engineers engaged in the election were on contract. The contractual engineers were assigned to do the field work of testing the EVMs and VVPATs, meanwhile the permanent engineers supervised.
The Quint was unable to get any response to the queries they made regarding the issue from ECIL as well as EC. The allowing of access to private consultant engineers to the EVMs is a security breach.
Engaging private players in the election duty is dangerous as they will not have any accountability neither will not be able to trace any kind of mishaps if occurs, says experts.
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh recently wrote a letter to Chief Election Commissioner to discuss the concerns regarding Electronic Voting Machine (EVMs).
