Most parties object, Election Commission shelves remote voting plan for now

The EC had circulated a concept note to political parties and sought feedback till February 28.

When asked by The Indian Express about the status of the proposal, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar said at a press conference on March 29 that the EC had received responses “from a limited number of parties” out of the nearly 60 national and state recognised parties it had written to.

“While the need for doing the outreach for the missing voters is established all across, the processes, administrative part, legal part and technological part are works in progress. Everybody has suggested to firm it up first. This is a long-drawn process. This will take time. But in any case, till that time, the outreach for bringing everybody to the polling booth continues,” Kumar had said.

Last December, the EC had announced that the prototype RVM, designed by the Electronics Corporation of India, which is one of two manufacturers of the existing Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), was ready for demonstration. The EC had invited political parties for a discussion and demonstration of the RVM on January 16, but the demonstration was not held as nearly all parties objected to the idea.

According to the EC, the RVM would be able to handle data of 72 constituencies simultaneously, and, as per the proposal, would be deployed for migrant voters outside their home constituencies.

Aam Aadmi Party MP Sanjay Singh, who was among those who attended the January 16 meeting, said the EC was unable to address basic queries. “If elections are going on in one state and there are voters from that state spread across another state, how many booths will be set up? Will the Model Code of Conduct be applied in the second state, even though it is not going to polls in normal course? The EC officials were not able to address these questions,” he said.

Speaking after the EC meeting, Congress leader Digvijaya Singh had said that since there was no survey of migrant workers in the country, how would they be identified.

Responding to a question in Lok Sabha on February 3, the Law Ministry had clarified that the EC has not proposed to use the RVM in any election as of now. “The ECI has informed that the introduction of RVM would not increase fake votes. The prototype RVM developed by ECIL is a robust and standalone system based on the existing EVMs, under the guidance of the Technical Expert Committee,” Law Minister Kiren Rijiju had said in a written reply.