AAP, BRS, Congress, SP among parties at Sharad Pawar EVM meeting

Senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh said the ECI must take note of the apprehensions in the minds of political parties and the people at large about the functioning of EVMs.

Sharad Pawar with Kapil Sibal, Digvijaya Singh and other opposition leaders after a meeting in New Delhi. (Express photo by Anil Sharma)

Stressing that every machine in the world can be “manipulated”, the Opposition parties, following a meeting convened by NCP supremo Sharad Pawar, Thursday decided to approach the Election Commission of India to seek a written response on various “apprehensions” regarding Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).

The meeting, held at Pawar’s official residence in New Delhi, was attended by leaders of the Congress, Samajwadi Party, JDU, AAP, CPI, CPM, Shiv Sena (UBT), BRS, IUML and Kapil Sibal, who recently launched the platform ‘Insaaf’ after quitting the Congress.

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Addressing a press conference after the meeting, senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh said the ECI must take note of the apprehensions in the minds of political parties and the people at large about the functioning of EVMs.

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“They (ECI) used to say these are standalone machines but now they say these are not standalone machines. Elements such as the name of candidates, party symbols are fed through the internet into the machines. They used to say the machines have one-time programmable chips now they say these are fitted with multiple programmable chips,” Singh alleged.

Pawar, who spoke briefly, said the parties expect the ECI to respond to these questions. Sibal said many of these questions have been raised in the past as well but the ECI did not address the concerns.

“We will once again go to the EC and seek written responses and if it does not respond, we will decide our future course of action. Any machine in the world can be manipulated and it is a fact that no other democracy in the world, whether it is in Europe or the UK or the US, uses EVMs for the purpose of voting,” Sibal said.

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