 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. I am Paranjoy Guha Thakurtha and we are now going to discuss whether the concerns that have been raised about the manipulation of the electronic voting machine system are genuine or not. I welcome to the studio Mr. M.G. Deva Sahayam. He's a former civil servant, now a social activist and a convener of a group called the Forum for Electrical Integrity. And with us here is Bappa Sena. He's a technologist with the free software movement. Let me start with you Mr. Deva Sahayam. You know there are different kinds of voting systems around the world. India used to have a paper system where the vote was recorded on paper and counted by hand. Then we move to the electronic voting machine where the vote was recorded in the memory of a machine and counted electronically and now we have added to that in some of the machines, not all the machines. A VVPAT which is called a Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail. So the vote is recorded in the memory but also can be printed on paper and the counting is done both electronically and by hand. So you have an audit system before the declaration of result. What is the problem sir with this system? The problem is very very simple. Now you know as you rightly said ballot paper I can see. A voter can see the ballot paper first, verify examinability that its candidate's name is there, symbol is there and takes it into that polling booth, stamps it, again see it. 2-3 times he can see it physically with his own eye that his candidate's name was there, symbol was there and he has voted and put it inside the box and goes away. As against this electronic voting machine it is recorded in memory, you can't see. One button is pressed, the sound comes, he presses a button, sound comes. So it is recorded in memory. So that is transparent and counting also, paper ballot is counted in front of everybody else, everyone knows what has been counted. You don't know who has voted for who but you can at least have examinability checking whereas in the electronic voting machine you have no idea. It is taken, plugged in into the computer and the result comes out. So the basic principles of examinability, knowledge whether he has voted for the right candidate or not is absent in electronic voting machine. That is why the VVPAT was introduced. VVPAT provides for a small opportunity when the voting is registered, a small slip comes for 7 seconds it hangs and drops into the box. You can at least see whether I have voted for the correct thing but that is not counted. They are not counting the votes. And also the VVPAT is not there in all the booths. No, this is going to be there for all the booths in the 2018 election. Problem is election commission is saying you just count only 0.5%, only one booth in a total assembly constituency you count the... Alright. Let me come to that. Let me bring Bappa Sinha into our conversation. The election commission has been saying that all the concerns raised by people like Mr. Devasayam are, you know, it's a figment of their imagination. At least they claim. They have had these series of meetings and they are saying EVMs are standalone. They are non-networked. They are not tamperable. They are made by two public sector organizations, the Electronic Corporation of India and Bharat Electronics. And they are saying it has been independently vetted, verified. They have been end-to-end testing. And the data stored internally cannot be transferred to any other device. And these EVMs are programmable only one time. And that cannot be rewritten after manufacture. The short point is the election commission of India says people like Mr. Devasayam are seeing ghosts where they are none. And the system is maybe not 100% foolproof because the machine can fail, but on the whole a sound, solid and credible system. What are your views? I'm a technologist, right? So I don't buy into the argument that introducing technology into a process necessarily makes it less transparent. When we had paper ballot systems, there used to be, we have heard about stories of large-scale rigging, right? Moot caption. Forget about the past, last month there was an election in Bengal, Panchayat elections. And we saw on record, on TV, where Thapa, what is called Thapa, right? Stamping. Where opposition party, the ruling party's candidate comes in, they bring their agents into the booth, capture the booth. It's called booth capturing, it's called intimidation of voters. And in the case of Bengal, it's interesting that you make the point, one-third of the candidates were elected unopposed because there was no rival. So there are various ways of intimidation. There were pictures and videos where agents of a particular party were openly seen stamping ballot papers, hundreds of ballot papers, putting them in ballot boxes. Ballot boxes were disappearing, ballot boxes were put on fire, all kinds of things were happening. So they were dumped into a pond. Yeah. So saying that without technology you can't do rigging, I don't buy it. So your view is that... I am not saying that at all. My argument is totally different. I am not questioning the technology of UVM at all. But elections are exercised in democracy. There's no democracy principle. I do not know whom do I vote for. One minute sir. I want my vote to be counted. What Baba Sinai is saying is that this is a low-enholder issue. It's an issue of intimidation. No, no, we are completely diverting ourselves. I am not asking for paper ballot at all. I am asking for counting of the way we pass slip, which they are not doing. In February this year, election commission issued a direction to the chief electoral officers. You count only one booth in a constituency that comes to 0.5 percent. So you can't compare. See, verification is not possible. Can you verify with a sample of 0.5 percent? We are saying verifiable it is possible only with 25 percent. All we are asking is, don't go back to the paper ballot. What you have described used to happen long ago. Now it doesn't happen. Parliament assembly doesn't happen because of the communication system. Police is moving fast. I have been part of the election process. It doesn't happen these days. But anyway, I am not going into that at all. We are saying Supreme Court has ordered UVPAT. All right. So I got counted. Okay. So would you go along with him? He says that look, there have been concerns raised. But let me give you the other viewpoint. People are saying when they win, they have no complaints. If a party wins, they have no complaints. It's always the party that loses that they start complaining. The point is the former chief election commissioners have all argued that it is a case of SAR grapes, that only the losing party complains. But the point, but I want your input into this. What Mr. Devasayam is arguing. He said why should you be just looking, if you are having UVPATs, the voter verifiable paper audit trail everywhere. Why are you counting such few? Why are you counting only one polling station in each assembly constituency randomly selected by a draw of lots? So let me answer a slightly larger question first before answering that particular question. So look, as a technologist, nobody claims that if you build a machine, a machine cannot be hacked, right? The moment you build a machine, it is possible to also hack the machine. So, but in the case of EVMs, as a technologist, what I would believe is that don't look at the EVM as a standalone machine, right? So if you take a assembly election, forget about a parliamentary election, if you take an assembly election in a state like let's say Bengal or UP, the number of polling booths and hence EVMs used is so huge, right? If I'm right, Bengal has something like 75,000 EVMs that are used in a Bengal assembly election. I mean, he will know the figures. We have 5143 loks of our constituencies and you know how many polling booths. See, on an average, each assembly constituency has got about 300 to 400 booths, 400, 500, maybe slightly, Bengal maybe slightly more, but they are counting only one. No, no, so I'm coming back. That doesn't reflect anything. So what we are saying is given the entire administrative mechanism that is in place, right? So there is a protocol in how EVMs are taken from where they are stored to the districts, right? Where the first level checks are done and then to the polling booths, there are tests done before they are deployed. So in spite of all these administrative checks, I'm still saying that it's possible to hack one EVM, two EVM, 10 EVMs. In fact, those who are complaining, they are saying in many cases, there have been many, many EVMs which have failed and malfunctioned. So let me clarify. I'm not talking about hacking or technology at all. The argument is totally different. So election commission, see, the case went before the German Supreme Court and India's High Court and Supreme Court at the same time, 2009. German Supreme Court clearly said democracy principles. Those four principles I have mentioned there. If it doesn't abide by that, you decide. So Germany decided it doesn't abide by the democracy principles. So they declared it unconstitutional and that's the end of it. They have gone back to the paper ballot. I'm not talking. Whereas the whole thing was, the Supreme Court gave a decision. By the time Supreme Court matter came before the Supreme Court, Koreshi has become the chief election commissioner who was my colleague. We used to work together. He gave the option based on the technology report. He gave the option of VPAT. So Supreme Court said yes, take the VPAT, but also poll and also count. But as you have yourself pointed out, the incidents of malfunctioning of VVPAT, so verified people audit trail has also been high. It's been one-fifth in Kairana. It has been almost one-fifth in Bhandara, Gondya. It's been more than 13% in Palgar against the Election Commission norm of 5%. And Baba, let me bring you in there. They're saying this is being used for the first time by the staff, so they're not used to it. They even said that extreme heat and extreme, you know, all kinds of reasons have been given. So let me finish my original point. So I don't think large-scale hacking of VVMs are possible, right? Given the administrative mechanism that is in place, without the public getting aware of that. Now, VPATs were introduced to add further transparency into the whole process, right? And I do agree that if you're going to add transparency, then doing it for one booth per assembly constituency doesn't serve the purpose, right? So when the political parties were asked to comment on that, I know for a fact that, for example, UP and CPM. How much the party and the CPM had demanded that a certain minimum percentage of VPATs be counted by default. I think CPM said the number would be 5%, UP said 25%. So that number, we can come to a reason. What do you think is a fair number? I mean, right now you're saying it's 0.5%. Now, 25% we are demanding, but a fair will be about 10% to 12% will be fair. So instead of 0.5%, you're saying it should be about 20%. 10% to 12% will be fair. Yeah, so see that number, you can do a mathematical modeling and come up with a reasonable number, which will make people happy, right? Which will at least, if you apply the mathematical rigor, it should be easy to come up with that number. And I agree doing it for one doesn't serve the purpose. It would be better if they did it for some percentage, which is greater than... And you're concluding remarks? Yeah, my point, he has agreed to my point. So election commission is not moving in that direction. They must move in that direction. So despite disagreement about how democratic the use of electronic voting machines are between the two of you, on one point I can say both of you are in agreement and you believe that the election commission and the authorities of this country should ensure that a much higher proportion of the VVPATs, the voter verifiable paper audit trails which exist in the ballot box should be counted together with the votes that are recorded on the machine before declaring elections. Before declaring elections. Before declaring elections. Before, there is one more point which is that, see for EVMs, the election commission says the acceptable rate of failures is between 1 and 2%. And that, I think all of us will agree, is an acceptable rate. For VVPATs, we have been seeing rates of failures of 20 to 25%. Which is too high. Which is just unacceptable. From a technologically point of view, it is unacceptable. Alright. So I do agree with him on that. That leads to two points. EVM in Karnataka was more than 4%, 4.5%. So election commission must ensure reliability of EVMs and also VVPAT. Okay. Thank you so much Mr. Devasayam for giving us your time. Thank you Baba Sena for giving us your time. The debate will go on. But on one point, our two panellists signed a complete agreement. Much more needs to be done to ensure better functioning of both the electronic voting machines as well as the voter verifiable paper audit rate. Thank you for being with us.