Remote voting machines: Most Opposition parties to challenge EC proposal at meeting today

It was not clear whether the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) were invited to the meeting, which was attended by representatives of the Janata Dal (United), the Shiv Sena, the National Conference, the CPI(M), CPI, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, the Rashtriya Janata Dal, the Peoples Democratic Party, the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi, the Revolutionary Socialist Party, and the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML). Former Congress leader and independent Rajya Sabha MP Kapil Sibal also attended the meeting.

Leaders of the parties that attended the meeting said the EC proposal lacked clarity. Besides, they said the definition of migrant labourers was not clear. The EC on December 29 declared that it was ready to pilot remote voting to address the problems faced by domestic migrants in travelling back to their home constituencies to vote.

The poll body said it had developed a multi-constituency Remote Electronic Voting Machine that can facilitate voting for different constituencies from a single remote polling booth and invited political parties for a discussion on January 16.

“The overall view of all the political parties who attended the meeting today was to unanimously oppose the proposal of the remote voting machine because it is still very sketchy. The proposal is not concrete and there are huge political anomalies and problems in the proposal. For instance, the definition of migrant labourers, the number of migrant labourers is not very clear,” said senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh, who attended the meeting.

“Therefore we all have unanimously made up our minds to oppose the proposal of remote voting machines,” Singh said.

The EC had asked the parties to furnish their written replies by January 31. Singh said the parties would meet again on January 25 to discuss the replies to be sent to the poll body. He said the parties would either send a joint reply or reply separately.

Singh said the leaderships of the NCP and the SP had spoken to him and “conveyed their views to me and have asked me to convey their views to you”. Asked about the TMC’s absence, Singh said, “We are not yet aware of the stand of the party but will discuss and update about their view.”

CPI general secretary D Raja said the parties would attend Monday’s meeting at the EC. “The parties which attended today’s meeting will all attend tomorrow’s meeting and we will raise critical questions about EVMs, RVMs, migrant labourers .. all questions we will raise. Without taking the political parties into confidence the EC cannot decide anything unilaterally,” he said.

Singh too spoke about concerns about EVMs. “All those concerns which have been documented after detailed discussion with computer science experts, professionals, cryptographers and the civil society had given a memorandum on May 2, 2022. The EC has not even responded to them. We shall discuss all these issues on January 25.”

RJD’s Rajya Sabha MP Manoj Kumar Jha said the EC proposal was not transparent and had no concrete analysis. He said the Opposition parties would ask questions about the “crisis” in its credibility. “Today, there are three crises of credibility – the credibility of the Commission, the credibility of the definition of a migrant labourer, and credibility of the very idea of Article 324 that envisages free and fair election. We will raise all these issues tomorrow,” he said.