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Politicians caution against manual vote tabulation
TIWN
TIWN
PHOTO : TIWN
Mumbai, May 18 (TIWN): Opposition parties have been apprehensive about glitches in Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), but a new spectre looms large ahead of May 23 when the counting of votes begins.
With the verdict of millions of voters in the 2019 elections sealed inside EVMs, there are fresh fears of foul play and potential manipulation that could result from alleged loopholes in the counting processes of the Election Commission of India (ECI), warns an expert on election laws.
In order to avoid this, there is a clamour that the ECI must provide a printout of the votes cast in each EVM to all candidates or their counting agents, which can be later tallied with the final vote-count.
In the EVM era, for reasons best known to it, the ECI continues the old and faulty "manual recording and tabulation" of votes, where there is scope for manoeouvring, said eminent Nagpur-based lawyer Vinod Tiwari, a BJP leader.
He has raised the issue with ECI since 2009 but said the election body was "reluctant to take any steps to improve the systems, which can benefit the entire electoral process".
"The old, pre-1990, ballot-paper era style of physical counting and tabulation of votes, is still in vogue. The counting supervisors on each counting table manually record, tabulate the votes displayed on the EVMs, then put them on excel sheets with further chances of manipulations, before they are fed in computers by government officials deployed for the purpose. There is a big possibility that the final results may be at variance with the actual votes cast," Tiwari said.
Worse is the reality of ignorant counting agents, appointed by various political parties, who remain blissfully unaware of such hoodwinking going on before their eyes, Tiwari said.
In the massive counting halls hired by the EC, for safety and security reasons, a strong wire mesh is erected around all the counting tables, the counting agents are kept at least 10-15 feet away, making it impossible to view properly what exactly is recorded on the sheets by the counting supervisors.
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