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Journalism of Courage
Unlike every other political party here, the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee has deployed a team of trained party workers to teach its booth-level agents (BLAs) the “normal functioning” of electronic voting machines (EVMs) so they can identify and immediately report any “tampering or manipulation” during voting at a polling booth.
This special unit “to ensure” that the EVMs are functioning “properly” is part of the DPCC’s election control room located in a basement within the premises of its office on Deen Dayal Upadhyay Marg — popularly known as ‘Rajiv Bhawan’ — which looks after several poll-related exercises and campaigns.
In one room, divided into three large cubicles with 10 to 13 people in each, some sit before laptops while others carry elaborate lists in their hands with a bunch of contacts and names printed on them.
Vinod Kumar Dubey, a middle-aged man with a thick black moustache and a tilak on his forehead, sits with nine others at a long rectangular table.
His job is to scan through the list of BLAs, call each of them, and tell them in detail about the functioning of the EVMs.
Scanning through the third page of a list, he calls one of the agents, informs them that he’s calling from the DPCC war room, and then quizzes them to gauge if they know how an EVM works.
“We get a list of people who will be deployed as BLAs from the booth in-charges. We then call them to explain the components and regular functioning of EVMs so they can report and take action if anything goes wrong on voting day… I tell them about the ‘Control Unit’ which should be kept with the presiding officer; the ‘Ballot Unit’ and the ‘VVPAT’, which should be kept inside the voting compartment; how a red light should blink within three seconds of casting a vote; how to check if the voter slip is accurate… we have asked the BLAs to immediately report if any inaccuracy takes place on polling day,” Dubey, who donned a white cotton kurta, along with a golden wristwatch, says.
The Congress has raised “issues” with EVMs in the past.
In its manifesto, the party said: “We will amend the election laws to combine the efficiency of the electronic voting machine (EVM) and the transparency of the ballot paper. Voting will be through the EVM but the voter will be able to hold and deposit the machine-generated voting slip into the voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) unit. The electronic vote tally will be matched against the VVPAT slip tally.”
In January, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh wrote to the Chief Election Commissioner on behalf of the INDIA group seeking time for a meeting to discuss the Opposition’s “concerns” regarding EVMs.
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