Diary of EVM No. Chhattis

May 6,11.50 p.m.

Armed policemen guard the road leading to Aryabhatt Polytechnic in Shakti Nagar,North Delhi. Here,the EVMs are stored in sealed strongrooms that will be opened soon. On the college lawns,a few men lounge on plastic chairs,others walk about purposefully with files under their arms. Chhattis is in a room marked AC No 20,one of the 10 rooms where EVMs for the 10 assembly constituencies of the Chandni Chowk Parliamentary Constituency have been kept.

May 7,midnight

The crowd of polling officials and workers gets restless. AC number 20,someone shouts with the shrillness of a town-crier. The lock is unsealed and the doors flung open. The yellow lights of the corridor stream into the windowless roomthe first flash of light in the room since it was sealed on May 2,after the EVMs were checked and names of the candidates entered into the control units of the machines.

Inside the strongroom,the EVMs,all stored in sealed polyproylene boxes,lie in wait on rectangles drawn in chalk on the floor. Chhattis is a set of fourthree EVMs (ballot units) and a control unit that has the chip containing data on the candidates.

If Chhattis had life,it would have thoughtstanding in the darkness in that rectangle marked 36of how surreal an experience this was,what it was to be a cog in the wheel of this giant Indian election machinery. Chhattis is one of the 141 polling sets (3 EVMs and a control unit) in the Chandni Chowk assembly constituency,one of the 1,497 sets in the parliamentary constituency,one of the 11,348 in Delhi,one of the 8.28 lakh used in this general election,whose beep is proof that this is a democracy that works,despite every conceivable hurdle.

Chhattis,along with seven other EVM units,is handed over to B.N. Garg,a genial man who is on deputation from the Delhi Jal Board. Garg is the Sector Officer in charge of seven polling booths in Chandni Chowk,the assembly constituency that shares its name with the parliamentary constituency.

May 7,2 a.m.

Chhattis is hauled on to a battered RTV (a van). Over the next two hours,labourers load the other EVMs on to buses,vans,and cars. Garg,dishevelled and tired,plonks on the tattered seat of the van. I have been at it since April,when I was called for election duty. Gali khata hoon gharwalon se (My family has been cursing me), he jokes. He hasnt had a moments rest since morning but Garg knows he has an important job. I cant relax till I get the EVMs back here after voting, he says.

Outside,a man bellows into the microphone: Sabhi gaadi ab compound se bahar ja sakte hain. The vehicles come to life in a sputtering chorus. The EVMs inside their boxes start to rockthe beginning of their journey to the respective polling stations.

May 7,4.10 a.m.

In the darkness,Nai Sarak looks quaint. The latticed balconies that have looked down that road for centuries; the open cycle rickshaws with groggy passengers picked up from Old Delhi Railway Station,the giant archways that take you down snaking alleys; the lone handcart that comes rattling down the slopeand yet,it is called ‘Nai’ Sarak.

The bus stops outside an arched iron gate with a board that reads: Marwadi Karata (Purana). Soon,polling officials for each of the seven booths in the area assemble outside the gate. After an hours wait,a guard flings open a small gate. The EVMs are taken out of the van,stuffed in through the service door and down an alleyway. Chhattis hangs onto the shoulders of an ageing,arthritic Class IV PWD worker,who huffs and puffs as he walks down the lane.

May 7,6.10 a.m.

Today,the Munna Lal Jain Dharamshala in Chira Khana area of Chandni Chowk will house four polling booths36,37,38 and 39. A.K. Malhotra,a Class XII Commerce teacher in a Delhi government school,is the presiding officer of booth no. 36. We are getting late. Have to be ready by 7, announces Garg.

Malhotra and his team of three women polling officialsall from various government departmentsopen the sealed boxes,take out the EVMs and fumble with the cables that will link the machines to each other and to the control unit. They have been trained in the run-up to the elections but this is the real thing and they are all clearly nervous. There are formalities to be doneforms to be filled and a mock poll before the actual vote.

The mock voting is done to convince polling agentsrepresentatives of political partiesthat the EVM buttons work and that the vote cast against a particular candidate goes only to him. The agents,all political wannabes dressed in white,peer at the machine as Malhotra assembles them for the mock vote. The Congress agent presses on the button against Kapil Sibals name and the machine beeps. BJP candidate Vijender Guptas man is next and a few others press on random names. And then,Malhotra presses the Result button on the control unit and the machine starts giving out results. Ho gayi tasalli? (Are you convinced?) Malhotra asks and the agents nod in approval. At 6.35 a.m.,Chhattis is taken to a table behind a cardboard screen.

May 7,7.00 a.m.

Chhattis is now out of bounds for everyoneonly the voter is allowed in. Ram Nivas,a 77-year-old,is among the first few voters. But he hasn’t got his card. Karne dijiye, the polling agents plead but the officials are strictno one can vote without their voter ID.

I have been voting since 1962. No one has ever asked for my card before. I have been an RSS member all my life, Nivas says angrily. He is escorted out.

A newly married couple walks in. A minute after he has voted,the man looks at the voters list and scowls. His wifes name has been struck out,deliberately, he says angrily. I know who to take it up with.

A young girl in jeans and tee is next. She comes out looking at the ink jabbed on her nail. Kapil Sibal is the only visible face here. A month ago,he put up a banner in Chandni Chowk,asking voters to write to him in case they had problems. That was cool. Oh,look what they have done to my nail. Smeared it with ink, says Nidhi Goyal,a PhD student at DU,who now looks very worried about her nail.

Kapil Sibal is winning101 per cent. Mark my words. The Congress is going to win 6-1, says Atul Panday,who identifies himself as the Youth Congress president of Chandni Chowk.

Its a trickle from then onthere is never a queue outside booth number 36. So Chhattis has it fairly easya long beep with every vote and then,a long wait for the next. But by the end of the day,Chhattis had recorded 417 of 609 votes. Thats a voter turnout of 68.47 per cent,far better than the 50 per cent in the Chandni Chowk parliamentary constituency and the 51 per cent that Delhi had recorded.

May 7,4.50 p.m.

Chhattis hasnt beeped in a long while. Garg looks anxiously at the clock. Ten minutes to go. I will be relieved after that. Uske bad chahe sar phode ye log, he says. At the stroke of five,Garg calls it a day. Its again a nervous rush at all four polling booths. EVMs back in their boxes,documents to be filled,put in paper bags and sealed. Everything has to be accounted forthere is even an envelope for unused paper tags. By 6.40 p.m.,the EVMs are all tied together and the papers stuffed into cloth sacks. Its time now for the journey back to the strongroom.

The giant electoral machine now works in reversea convoy of polling officials and workers makes its way back through the same alleyways,the EVMs are squeezed back through the dingy service gate and hauled into the battered RTV on Nai Sarak. They will now be taken back to the strongrooms in Aryabhatt Polytechnic in North Delhi. At the Chandni Chowk junction,Chhattis,the other EVMs and polling officials shift out of the RTV on to a waiting DTC bus.

May 7,7 p.m.

The bus leaves Nai Sarak. The shutters are still down in Chandni Chowkits election day holidaybut the crowd is out. The setting sun has streaked the sky golden and as the bus pulls out,the muezzin at the nearby Masjid Shahi Bagh Wali calls out for evening prayers. Its a different Nai Sarak from what it was at 4 a.m.probably why it is called Nai Sarak.

An hour later,the convoy of vehicles queues up outside Aryabhatt Polytechnic. The EVMs have to be deposited at the 163 reception centres set up on the ground. As each of the buses draws up at the gate,theres a mad scramble. Weary poll officials haul their sacks,the EVMs and themselves out of the buses and rush to the gate. The gate is almost closed except for a narrow opening. Its a crush. Inside,the college ground is all lit up with bright neon lights. Its an election mela with a ring of reception counters on the ground.

May 7,8.30 p.m.

Malhotra and his team carry Chhattis and their sack with the papers,pins and envelopes to a counter with a banner that reads AC No: 20,Sector 6.

Another scramble here. Other presiding officers and their teams fall over each other as they wait to deposit their EVMs and documents. Chhattis is at the feet of the PWD worker who had faithfully lugged him all the way. The old man is sweating profusely,his tired feet bent over Chhattis.

Just when they think it is all over,the man behind the counter says,Checklist laane gaye hain. There are weary sighs all over. Some of the officials squat on the ground.

Soon,the checklist arrives and Chhattis is hauled on to the table at the counter. After everything has been checkedthe seals,the documents,signatures,etcChhattis is put away. It will stay here till all the other EVMs arrive. Then,it will hauled back to the strongroom where it came from,placed on the rectangle marked 36,the lights switched off and then,eights days in the darkness,before Chhattiss control panel is taken out againon May 16,counting day. But this time,there will be no midnight journey as the votes will be counted on the college ground.

The route to e-voting

EVMs were first introduced in India in 1982,in 50 polling booths during the by-election to the Parur Assembly Constituency of Kerala. But after the election,it was alleged that 31 votes were cast in the name of persons who were either dead or absent. The case went to the Kerala High Court,which dismissed the petition challenging the use of EVMs. According to a paper on EVMs by S.Y. Quraishi,the Election Commissioner of India,EVMs are the third and latest system of voting adopted by India in the six decades of its democracy. The first was the coloured ballot boxes and later,boxes with symbols of political parties. But people complained that they were blind to colours and that made booth capture easy. This was replaced with the

marking system where voters stamped on the ballot paper and then dropped it into the ballot box. India turned into an e-democracy in 2004,during the last Lok Sabha elections,when 10.75 lakh EVMs were used across all polling stations in the country.