A PIL was filed in the Supreme Court on Wednesday seeking a direction to the Election Commission to stop the usage of Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) for conducting polls, stating safety issues over their vulnerability to getting hacked or being tampered with.
Kanyakumari-based advocate C R Jaya Sukin maintained that voting through ballot papers was a more reliable and transparent method for the electoral process of any country.
Several developed countries like the US, Japan, Germany, and others have rejected EVMs during elections, and have chosen the ballot system of voting. This should indicate that EVMs are not satisfactory instruments to be used for the electoral process of a country. EVMs can be hacked. But the ballot system is extremely safe, he said.
"EVM hacking is a threat that has been given not only in India but in many other countries, which is why several of them have banned it. EVMs, like all other machines, are prone to errors and malfunctioning. No machine ever made anywhere in the world is infallible," he claimed.
The petitioner said out of the 31 countries that used or studied the EVMs, only four used it nationwide, 11 used it in some parts or small elections. There are five countries using it on a pilot basis, three nations have discontinued it and 11 that used it on a pilot basis decided to stop its use.
He claimed that the EVMs can be tampered with during its manufacturing and in such cases, it does not even require any hacker or malware to manipulate the actual voting.
(Published 25 November 2020, 12:50 IST)
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