The Election Commission of India’s proposal to introduce remote Electronic Voting Machines that would aid domestic migrants to vote away from their home constituency has come under the scrutiny of the Congress party which has raised questions on the process of identification of remote voters to the counting of votes in different locations.
The Election Commission today demonstrated the prototype of the remote Electronic Voting Machines before representatives of all recognised national and regional parties. The EC had called a meeting of these parties for a discussion on increasing voter participation.
A day ahead of the meeting called by the Election Commission of India, Opposition parties, including the Congress, met in Delhi and decided that they would jointly oppose the EC’s proposal. According to The Indian Express, Praveen Chakravarty, chairman of Congress’s data department, made a presentation before the Opposition leaders and highlighted multiple concerns with regard to the poll panel’s plan to introduce remote voting.
During the presentation, Congress raised questions on the process to be adopted for the identification and registration of the remote voters of a constituency, as well as how the location of the remote polling stations will be decided. Concerns were also raised about the logistics involved for political parties, asking how polling agents would monitor remote voting in different locations away from the constituency.
The counting process, specifically the storage and transport of VVPAT slips as well as the EC’s count of 30 crore migrants were among the other concerns raised by the Congress.
Congress leader Digvijaya Singh had earlier said that most opposition parties were going to oppose the EC’s proposal as it was “sketchy” and “not concrete”. Singh also pointed to huge anomalies in the proposal for the remote voting machine with little clarity on even the definition of migrant labourers.
On Monday, the poll panel invited eight nationally recognised and 57 state parties for a meeting where it also demonstrated the prototype of the remote EVM. Election Commission officials had earlier said RVMs will be developed as “a robust, failproof and efficient stand-alone system” based on existing electronic voting machines and will not be connected to the internet.
“It is understood that there are multifarious reasons for a voter not opting to register in a new place of residence, thus missing out on exercising the right to vote. Inability to vote due to internal migration (domestic migrants) is one of the prominent reasons to be addressed to improve voter turnout and ensure participative elections,” the Election Commission of India had said while announcing the concept of the proposal.