Bhubaneswar: Calling for transparency in voting, the Socialist Party (India), Right to Recall Party (RRP) and Lokshakti Abhiyan advocated for ballot paper system replacing the EVM machine during polls as it can check vote theft. In a press meet at Lohia Academy here Wednesday, they gave a live demo of a working model similar to the EVM machine, showing how millions of paper votes can be stolen across India due to the black glass presence in the EVMs. The demo was presented by Pawan Sharma of RRP where he showed that the first voter pressed the banana button and saw the banana slip in the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) when the light turned on.
Similarly, the next voter pressed the banana button and also saw the printed slip of banana in VVPAT. But on opening the VVPAT, one banana and one apple slip came out. Terming it as vote theft, Sharma said neither the voter nor any official present would know about this. Socialist Party (India) national secretary and Ramon Magsaysay Award winner Sandeep Pandey said that through this system, around two to three lakh votes can be stolen in one Lok Sabha constituency without anyone’s notice. Pandey, while answering the question of counting 100 per cent slips of VVPAT, said that even if 100 per cent slips are counted, the theft will not be caught because the paper slips can be replaced by the presence of black glass in the EVM. “At the time of counting, the electronic vote of the counting unit will be 100 per cent matched with the paper vote of the VVPAT and the vote which was stolen will not be caught,” he said.
ARINDAM GANGULY, OP