The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : EVM attracts world attention

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, May 05, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

EVM attracts world attention

By M. Malleswara Rao

HYDERABAD, MAY 4. The success story of Electronic Voting Machine (EVM), which made the stupendous task of conducting elections in the world's largest democracy (with 67.5 crore voters) possible, has evoked curiosity in many countries, especially in South-East Asia.

After flooding the Government of India with enquiries, election officials from these countries are making a beeline at the Electronic Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) here, where they are produced on a mass scale, for a first hand assessment of its efficacy before placing bulk orders for use in their own countries.

These countries include Thailand, Bangladesh, Singapore, Malaysia, Nepal, Afghanistan, Philippines and Congo in Africa where elections are reportedly due, and Sri Lanka where polls were held recently. Enquiries also came from two American universities.

The visiting teams, held the view that the tiny wonder machine resembling a large-sized calculator can be the ultimate answer to various electoral malpractices like rigging and that they also suit their conditions which are similar to that of India like high temperatures and low literacy rate. Demonstrations have been held in Sri Lanka and Thailand while the Bangladesh Chief Election Commissioner himself came to ECIL.

Officials were impressed by the EVM's "rugged, sturdy, tamper-proof " shape besides its "non-volatile memory". One problem faced by these countries is that they will have to amend their constitutions providing for replacement of the ballot-paper with EVM for polling.

D.A. Rao, ECIL Senior Deputy General Manager, said, most countries wanted to straightaway adopt the EVM subject to some conditions, while Singapore sought "technology transfer" having a plan to add bio-metric finger-printing feature. By this, the machine will open up to absorb the vote as and when voters swipe the bio-metric card, avoiding the photo-identity card as seen in India.

The EVM "can also be linked" to satellite for online polling as suggested recently by Net India which undertook a mass education campaign on EVMs recently using simulators.

The EVM came out from a team of ECIL scientists after years of research. It was successfully used for first time in 1989 in Shadnagar (Andhra Pradesh) and Parur (Kerala) Assembly by elections, turning around the fortunes of the PSU. The Bharat Electronic Limited, Bangalore, too manufactures the machine now. For these elections, ECIL alone produced 5.6 lakh pieces against a requirement of 10.6 lakhs worth Rs. 800 crores.

Is the EVM fool-proof? Mr. Rao says that charges made against the machine by political parties have been found "baseless and unfounded".

The failure rate is almost nil, he adds referring to Andhra Pradesh, which used 1.29 lakh EVMs for polling with none registering failure on its own. About 10 "failed" due to "human error" (polling officials). The failure rate was 0.001 per cent.

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