EC fully satisfied with EVMs: Chawla

“Picked at random, EVMs are rotated from State to State”

Chief Election Commissioner Navin B. Chawla on Thursday said the Election Commission was 100 per cent satisfied with Electronic Voting Machines and the huge administrative procedures related to their use.

Mr. Chawla, however, said the commission was concerned about allegations of use of money power in elections and would strengthen monitoring mechanisms.

Asked about the position of the EC on doubts expressed by different quarters and court cases on the reliability of the EVMs, he told journalists here that they could not be tampered with.

The EC did not make these machines, nor was any private player involved. It was not a Personal Computer-based system and worked as a standalone machine.

Mr. Chawla said the EVMs were picked at random and rotated from State to State, so there was no scope for manipulating them in favour of a particular candidate or party.

Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi said the EC had decided to adopt for the entire country the practice of live webcast of polling that was introduced in Arunachal Pradesh.

He said sitting in Delhi, the commission was able to see the live feed.

Dr. Quraishi said the northeast had been a leader and pioneer in some innovative electoral practice. It was a young IAS officer, Swati Sharma, the then Deputy Commissioner of West Kameng district, under whose initiative the trial webcast counting process was done during the 2009 Lok Sabha polls.

In Arunachal Pradesh, the webcast was arranged by Ms. Sharma in West Kameng and in Tirap district by the then Deputy Commissioner, Ankur Garg.

About preparations for the Assam Assembly elections, due in 2011, Dr. Quraishi said appointment of Booth Level Officers (BLO) would be completed within the next two months and time-bound training would be undertaken for them.

The commission directed the Chief Electoral Officer and the District Election Officers to review the condition of existing polling stations and find out if any additional or auxiliary polling station needed to be set up.

The CEC appealed to political parties to appoint Block Level Agents (BLA) so that the BLOs and the BLAs could work together to ensure the process of preparation of electoral roll and photo identity cards were free of defects. He said no other country in the world had the system of appointing BLOs.