BALLOT PAPERS Vs EVMs

Whenever we Indians do something big our top brass come to the centre stage and make a big announcement of our achievement to the world. We are the first or one of the top three or so to do it is normally appended to it. Surprisingly when Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs ) introduced in India no one proclaimed with pride that we are one of the four countries using EVMs in elections nation wide. The other three are Brazil, Estonia and Venezuela. Countries like Canada, USA, Peru and Argentina are using this in some areas. Belgium, France, Netherlands, Germany, Paraguay and Japan have scrapped it after using for sometime. Japan, one of the leading manufacturers of electronic goods in the world, supplies EVMs to India but they prefer paper ballots. All these countries and rest of the large number of countries who do not use EVMs force us to reconsider the reliability of these  machines.

We are using EVMs in India for quite sometime. However, in the recent past, voices raised from some corners against the reliability of this machine. The persistent media reports about the fowl play possibilities in these machines make the voter suspicious  rather cautious.

The franchise opportunity gifted to the common man of India once in five years makes him proudly feel that he is the core of the largest democratic country in the world. At least when he exercise this so called right and power he must be confident enough that the democratic power exercised by him stands firm and remains unaltered.

If the common man gets more confidence with the conventional paper ballots what prevents us from going back to the same ?

KV George