'EVMs can easily be tampered with'

The campaigners against electronic voting machines (EVMs) feel vindicated following the allegations by the Congress that the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Gujarat had tampered with EVMs to sweep the municipal elections.

The Congress alleged that EVMs were tampered with during the Gujarat Mucipal elections.

"Now that all parties, including the Congress, have agreed that EVMs are vulnerable to tampering, the Election Commission should take cognisance of these charges and introduce a tamperproof voting mechanism," said V. V. Rao, national coordinator of VeTA (Verifiability, Transparency and Accountability In Indian elections), an NGO fighting against the loopholes in EVMs.

Rao said the controversy would continue as long as the government and the Election Commission viewed it as a political issue rather than a technical problem. "The role of EVMs in elections has never been transparent," he said.

Former union energy secretary EAS Sarma, who has also been fighting against EVMs agreed with Rao. "At least, the voter should get a receipt from the EVM, as in ATM machines to show that his vote has been registered," he said.

Andhra Pradesh-based researcher and electronic security expert Hariprasad Vemuru, who had been arrested by the Mumbai police on charges of stealing an EVM unit, had established that EVMs can be easily tampered.

After he was released on bail recently, Hariprasad bagged the 2010 Pioneer Award from San Francisco-based civil liberties organisation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for disclosing the security flaws in paperless EVMs.

Interestingly, on October 4, the EC conducted an all-party meeting in New Delhi, where it agreed to consider the suggestion of introducing a system of Voter Verified Paper Trail (VVPAT) along with EVMs.

Under this system, the voter would get an acknowledgement from the printer. He would have to drop it in an adjacent ballot box.

While counting would be done only through EVMs, the paper votes would be counted only if a complaint was lodged by the lost candidates.