New Delhi: While the country’s EVM-based elections are being hailed worldwide, the Opposition’s bid to cast aspersions on the exercise after its defeat in the Maharashtra Assembly polls has been rubbished by the analysis and research agency Info In Data in its latest report released on Friday.

Echoing the Election Commission’s earlier assertions about a fool-proof system against rigging, Info In Data provided a detailed report on the checks and balances in the electoral process that leave no scope for bungling.

The report highlighted the involvement of parties and candidates at 14 stages in checking or signing seals of the EVMs during the electoral process.

All party representatives are present at testing, randomisation and other technical stages in Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT)-EVM units on six occasions, said the report.

“At various stages, the candidates or their representative sign five times on the seals that lock the EVMs,” said Info In Data.

The report pointed toward the zero possibility of rigging by saying that during the entire process, VVPAT-EVM units, with signatures of EC functionaries, were shared three times with political parties, including the list of 100 percent checked EVMs.

The report comes as a fresh setback to the Opposition, particularly the Congress which has been hiding behind the excuse of EVM tampering for its recent electoral debacles.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was left searching for words to describe the MVA’s drubbing. Just as he did in Haryana, he described the loss in Maharashtra as “unexpected”.

Taking to social media platform X, Gandhi wrote in Hindi, “Maharashtra results are unexpected, and we would conduct a detailed analysis.”

The Maharashtra Congress even announced that it will launch a signature campaign, demanding that future elections should be conducted on ballot paper instead of EVMs to save democracy.

Maharashtra Congress President Nana F. Patole said that nobody believed the results of the recent Maharashtra Assembly polls and “there is a feeling in all quarters that something has seriously gone wrong”.

Three days after the Congress’ drubbing in Maharashtra, the Supreme Court also hit out at the double standards adopted by politicians on EVMs, depending on the outcome for them.

“If you win the elections, EVMs or voting machines are not tampered,” said the top court junking a petition seeking to go back to ballot paper voting in elections.

The report by Info In Data also reminds Congress not to go back in time and demand the return of ballot paper voting—something that has been assailed even in the US.

For instance, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk hailed the EVM-based Indian electoral system for quick counting capability. In a recent post on X, he praised the Indian system’s ability to count 640 million votes in a single day. His post came against the backdrop of the slow and time-consuming counting process in the US, particularly in California.

Musk’s reaction was welcomed by BJP leader and former Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar who wrote on X, “Unhackable EVMs, Voter IDs, Biometric Digital IDs – essentials of a large, modern democracy that India is.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

–IANS