Security fears put spanner in civic body’s e-voting plan

But the BMC’s election department has received more than 30 objections from individuals and organisations against the implementation of e-voting,citing security concerns.

An official from the election department said the system is not robust and can lead to rigging. “The plan was announced in February this year,but authorities sat on it for many months. Now,there is hardly any time left now and the demo trial is yet to take place. We have inspected the existing system and have observed a number of potential security breaches,” he said. The estimated cost of implementing e-voting is Rs 35 crore.

BMC Additional Municipal Commissioner Aseem Gupta,who is also the chairman of the state-appointed technical committee on e-voting,admitted there is very little time left. On whether e-voting will be implemented this time,he did not seem optimistic and said: “It is true that we do not have much time left,but we are still awaiting the demo trial and will take a final call once that happens.” Officials from the State Election Commission refused to comment on Wednesday and said they will comment only after Diwali.

Last month,a Delhi-based NGO called Centre for Transforming India wrote to BMC officials as well as Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan,warning them against the loopholes in the system.

“Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation,which was the first in the country to implement e-voting,had a robust system that could survive more than 400 virus attacks. The software being proposed for BMC has many loopholes that can cause security breaches and can give much scope for rigging to the administrator,” said Pankaj Sharma,chief trustee of the firm which deals with governance reforms.

While earlier it was proposed to enable voting through personal computers and mobile phones,it was later decided to have it only at e-kiosks. “E-kiosks may be similar to polling booths,but yet can’t recreate the secure environment for a voter that the latter can,where no one apart from the voter himself will know for whom he/she has cast the vote,” said Sharma.

Meanwhile,the helpline started by BMC as a part of its month-long election initiative has received only about 7,439 calls from citizens from October 1 to 20. The helpline is for citizens who want to get a voter ID card,make changes in their existing card or make deletions.