“Concerns Remains Unaddressed”: Jairam Ramesh Writes To Election Commission, Requests Meeting On VVPATs

Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh wrote to election commission seeking for a meeting with India bloc members as the concern over the Election Voting machine remained unaddressed in the previous meeting. He called the clarification provided by the commissioner “generic” and added that so far “no hearing or meeting was provided to the INDIA parties’ delegation despite repeated requests”.

In his letter to the election commissioner, he mentioned that the INDIA bloc members were not successful so far to “discuss and provide suggestions on the use of VVPAT’s based on the resolution passed at meeting of INDIA parties”. The INDIA bloc members put forth its suggestion on the use of Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT).

On December 19, the INDIA bloc members passed a resolution which included a detailed memorandum to the ECI with “several specific questions on the design and operation of the EVM’s. “Unfortunately, the ECI has been reluctant to meet an INDIA delegation on this memorandum,” the resolution stated.

In the resolution, the members suggested a solution that “instead of the VVPAT slip falling in the box, it should be handed over to the voter who shall then place it in a separate ballot box after having verified his or her choice. 100% counting of VVPAT slips should then be done”.

The Congress general secretary then requested for a meeting with the 3-4 members of the bloc to put forward their point of view on VVPATs. “Surely, this is put forward is a perfectly reasonable and legitimate”. Ramesh has alleged that they have put several requests for the meeting previously to discuss the same.

“This was supported with several requests – on August 9, 2023, August 10, 2023, August 16, 2023, August 18, 2023, and August 23, 2023, – for a meeting of an INDIA Parties’ delegation with the ECI. On August 23, 2023, ECI issued a clarification to our counsel on the memorandum,” he stated.

When approached earlier, EC directed them to refer to the standard FAQs on EVM which is available on the ECI website and explained the legal backing of the EVMs through section 61A of the Representation of Peoples’ Act, 1951. EC also summarized the judgments of the High Courts and the Supreme Court on the issue and also provided a chart of assembly and parliamentary election results since 2004 to show the political party winning the maximum number of seats changed several times.