'Res Judicata': End of EVM debate

Doubts over the integrity of EVMs are influenced by results. The BJP developed doubts over EVMs after losing two successive Lok Sabha elections in 2004 and 2009. GVL Narsimha Rao, Psephologist turned politician, wrote a book titled Democracy at Risk! Can We Trust Our Electronic Voting Machine (2010) that was prefaced by LK Advani. However, they overcame the moral crisis after a resounding victory in 2014. The Aam Aadmi Party ungrudgingly accepted massive victories through EVM in the Delhi elections in 2015 and 2020, but tried to prove that the results of the elections in five states in 2017 were rigged.

In Chhattisgarh, the Congress felt its victory in the 2019 assembly elections was due to the support of the voters, but its loss in 2023 was due to manipulation in the EVM. Last year, the Congress blamed its losses in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh on EVM but attributed its triumph in neighbouring Telangana to its positive campaign.

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Can things get more ridiculous? The diversity of results in the EVM era has actually been greater than in the pre-EVM era, not due to technology but political dynamics. Whatever the people might say of the ‘scientific rigging’, it was not the introduction of the EVM but a popular movement spearheaded by Mamata Banerjee that unseated the Left Front in West Bengal after 34 years.

Assembly elections in West Bengal were conducted on EVMs both in 2001 and 2006, but it was only in 2011 that the Left Front was unseated. The BJP has been continuously in power in Gujarat since 1995 (pre-EVM days). This includes the period from 2004 to 2014, when a Congress-led UPA was in the Centre. Power keeps alternating between the Congress and the BJP in Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh, regardless of the introduction of the EVM or the ruling party in the Centre. Thus, no formula could be set that might validate a conspiracy theory.

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The days of paper ballots were not without their share of controversy. In March 1971, the discovery of surplus ballot papers found in Chandigarh created political furore. On March 25, 1971, shortly after the conclusion of the Fifth Lok Sabha elections, a delegation of Members of Parliament, including Digvijay Narain, M S Gurupadaswamy and L K Advani met the then Chief Election Commissioner, S P Sen-Varma, at his residence and produced him a bunch of ballot papers for the Tarn Taran Parliamentary Constituency in Punjab. All these ballot papers, serially numbered, were in good condition. The delegation alleged that thousands of such ballot papers meant for various parliamentary constituencies in Punjab, Haryana, and Chandigarh had been recovered from a godown in Chandigarh, and since the printing of ballot papers was far in excess of the actual requirement, the polls in most of these constituencies were vitiated.

Sen-Varma immediately deputed the Deputy Election Commissioner, P.I. Jacob, to proceed to Chandigarh to investigate the matter. Jacob had reached Government Press, Chandigarh, at about 10 am on March 26. He found that ballot papers for 23 parliamentary constituencies in Punjab, Haryana, and Chandigarh were printed in that government press.

In fact, the authorities had kept the margin of error at only two per cent, far lower than the permissible limit of five per cent, to account for the wastages. Only 252,631 surplus ballot papers were printed for 23 parliamentary constituencies, when the figure could have been far more. However, the problem arose when, along with 6,000 waste papers shredded to pieces by official orders, after the election results were declared, these surplus ballot papers were removed intact by the contractor, whereupon between 10,000 and 12,000 ballot papers fell into the hands of scrap dealers (Kabariwala). Though the Election Commission was not culpable for this mix up, what happened was contentious enough.

The 1977 Sixth Lok Sabha elections also witnessed a sideshow of controversy regarding ballot papers. Law and Justice Minister Shanti Bhushan told Lok Sabha on March 30, 1977, that a total of 16,506 ballot papers with duplicate numbers belonging to Barasat, Joynagar (SC), Barrackpore, Dum Dum, Cooch Behar (SC), Jalpaiguri, Contai, and Purulia parliamentary constituencies got printed at the government press in Alipur, Kolkata, before being detected by the returning officers. The Minister ascribed the error to workers working in the government press on a contract basis.

On April 29, 1982, the Indian Express came out with a flavoured story that ballot papers from the 1980 parliamentary elections had been found to wrap paan (betel leaves) in Bijapur, Karnataka. “Zarda, saada, meetha, masala”, read the juicy story, “order any kind of paan in Bijapur’s paan shops, and they come wrapped in votes cast either in favour of K.B. Choudhary (Congress) or Mr N.S. Kheda (Janata). Most of these had been cast in Tikota Assembly segment." Syed Sibte Razi, MP from Uttar Pradesh, made a reference to the story in Rajya Sabha the same day.

From invalid voting to booth capturing, and logistic issues to environmental degradation, the paper ballot comes with risks, onus, and costs. It was the advent of the EVMs that eliminated these problems. The recent Supreme Court judgement states that the control units of the EVMs are configured in such a way that each vote takes about 15 seconds. Thus, in one minute, only four votes can be cast, which prevents and checks bogus voting.

Now, with Justice Dipankar Datta invoking res judicata, which would be applicable to writ petitions filed under Article 32 and Article 226 as well, could we be sure that uninformed criticism of EVMs will now rest in peace?

This is the final part of the two-part Res Judicata series. Read part one here .

The writer is author of the book ‘The Microphone Men: How Orators Created a Modern India’ (2019) and an independent researcher based in New Delhi. The views expressed herein are his personal.