RULING OUT shelving of remote voting machines (RVMs), Prof Rajat Moona, director, Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar (IIT-GN), who is an active member of the Technical Expert Committee of the Election Commission for electronic voting machines (EVMs), said that experts are still working on it. “It (RVMs) has not been dropped and people are still working on it. There are administrative and procedural issues more than technical ones,” said Prof Moona, who has been instrumental in defining EVMs and VVPATs and has also contributed to defining the national voter service portal and national electoral search for voters. The Election Commission had sought suggestions on its proposal to use specially designed RVMs to enable migrants to cast their votes from outside their home constituencies in an all-party meeting held on January 16,2023. In the meeting, political parties raised some major concerns, such as, if a candidate is in city x and the voters are all over the country, how will the candidate connect with them? “The EC has some ways of doing it but that require some discussion. The EC is consolidating the suggestions, which are mostly administrative than technical, that it will have to work on. This will require consultation with the political parties,” Prof Moona said. Since the demonstration of RVMs did not happen, the technical team is not working on any changes. “Right now it looks like things will work. Right now there is no change that is being envisaged,” Prof Moona told The Indian Express. Another major concern of political parties was how will counting of votes take place for multi-constituency voting machines. “Few issues were raised (in the meeting) and their point was to first sort out these issues before we go ahead with the demonstration because demonstration means you have a solution. Demonstration was even though ready but not carried out. In the question-answer round, all parties expressed their views and the EC took a note of them. It is not shelved and still happening. The future action is going to be decided by the Election Commission.” Prof Moona said. He expressed the unlikelihood of RMVs being used in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. “It requires a lot of effort in voter registration and other things. If it is to happen, things need to start rolling by now; manufacturing has to happen for remote machines. So it is unlikely to happen in the 2024 elections,” he said.
