[Marxistindia] CPI(M) leaders meeting with Election Commission

marxistindia
news from the cpi(m)
September 07, 2009

A delegation consisting of CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat,
Member, Polit Bureau, Sitaram Yechury, Member Secretariat, V Srinivasa
Rao and a technical expert Prabir Purkayastha met the three-member
Election Commission and the technical experts committee of the Election
Commission and raised some concerns regarding the use of EVMs. They had
a two hour long meeting and exchanged views. The CPI(M) raised the
following points:

On The Use of EVMs

There are some questions raised about the reliability of the EVMs:

1. Possibility of incorporating a Trojan horse into the chip.

2. Possibility of manipulation of chips during manufacturing, insertion
and transportation stages.

3. Lack of EC control on the entire technical process of the EVMs.

4. Lack of third party check/inspection/guarantee on the programming of
the chips used in the EVMs.

5. Banning the usage of EVMs in some Western countries particularly in
Europe.

6. Reporting of errors in some machines and the discrepancies in the
results.

Some steps that need to be taken to restore the confidence of the
political parties and people on the usage of the EVMs

1. The entire manufacturing process has to be done under the control of
the Election Commission and for this an exclusive technical department
needs to be established.

2. Both hardware and software should be in public domain.

3. The chips manufactured by ECIL, BEL should be allowed for yearly
random third party inspections either by NIC or IITs.

4. All the machines should be randomly changed from state to state and
within the country in every election.

5. A verification tool should be developed and made available to all.

eom

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