When Supreme Court junked the Election Commision’s first EVM experiment in Kerala

In 1982, the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced that the machine would be used as a pilot project in 50 out of 84 polling stations in the Parur constituency during that year’s Assembly elections in Kerala. The central government had not sanctioned the use of the machines, but the ECI used its constitutional powers under Article 324, which gives it the power of “superintendence, direction, and control” over elections.

In the result declared on May 20, 1982, Sivan Pillai (CPI) beat Ambat Chacko Jose (Cong) by 123 votes. Pillai got 30,450 votes, 19,182 of which were cast using voting machines.

Jose challenged the result in the trial court, which upheld the validity of voting via machines, and the result of the election. Jose appealed to the Supreme Court, where a Bench comprising Justices Murtaza Fazal Ali, Appajee Varadarajan, and Ranganath Misra heard the case.

What top court said

The ECI argued that its powers under Article 324 would supersede any Act of Parliament, and if there was conflict between the law and the ECI’s powers, the law would yield to the Commission.

In response, Justice Fazal Ali would write, “This is a very attractive argument but on a closer scrutiny and deeper deliberation…it is not possible to read into Art. 324 such a wide and uncanalised power”. The Bench unanimously held that introducing voting machines was a legislative power that only Parliament and state legislatures could exercise (Articles 326 and 327), not the ECI.

The ECI also relied on Section 59 of The Representation of the People Act, 1951 and Rule 49 of The Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961. Section 59 says “votes shall be given by ballot in such manner as may be prescribed”, and Rule states the ECI can publish a notification to “direct that the method of voting by ballot shall be followed…at such polling stations as may be specified in the notification”.

However, the court held that the “manner as may be prescribed” was by using ballot paper, not voting machines. The court also held that the word ‘ballot’ in its “strict sense” would not include voting through voting machines, and noted that the Centre as a rule-making authority “was not prepared to switch over to the system of voting by machines”.

The court observed that “if the mechanical process is adopted, full and proper training will have to be given to the voters which will take quite some time”.

Aftermath of ruling

A byelection was held on May 22, 1984, which  Jose won. But the idea of voting machines would not be abandoned.

In 1988, the election law was amended to insert Section 61A, which allowed the ECI to specify the constituencies where votes would be cast and recorded by voting machines.

A decade later, EVMs were used at 16 Assembly seats in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Delhi. This was expanded to 46 Lok Sabha seats in 1999 and, in 2001, state elections in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry, and West Bengal were entirely conducted using EVMs.

By the 2004 Lok Sabha election, EVMs had completely replaced ballot papers at all 543 seats.