India’s EC mulls new-age EVMs to help 300mn plus internal migrants and NRIs to vote

BY S VENKAT NARAYAN,

Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, December 26: The Election Commission of India (ECI) is examining an ambitious plan to allow internal migrants and Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) to vote for a candidate in their home constituencies from anywhere in the country and abroad. This will enable 290 million Indians working in the country away from his birthplace, and 16 million NRIs working abroad.

In the world’s largest democracy, 911 million out of 1,138 million people are aged above 18, and are eligible to vote. In last year’s Lok Sabha election, 610 million (67%) voted—-the highest in Indian parliamentary history.

The proposal under discussion involves ushering in a new-age electronic voting machine (EVM) that will have a dynamic candidate’s list to enable voting for a contestant in one’s home constituency.

Current EVMs have a constituency-specific ballot unit which lists candidates only for a specific constituency. EVMs with a ‘dynamic ballot paper’ will display a list of contestants of a voter’s home constituency.

For instance, a voter registered in Malda in West Bengal but working in Delhi will be able to vote for a candidate of his or her choice in Malda from Delhi itself. At present, migrant voters are unable to vote unless they go to their constituency.

 About 10,000 new-age EVMs are estimated to serve the purpose with every district given 5-6 such machines at various ‘remote voting’ centres with a higher number in bigger cities having higher migrant population.

 The full Election Commission is set to soon deliberate a conceptual framework of the technology to enable vote-from-anywhere, with the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in mind, The Economic Times quoted officials as saying. Pilot runs are likely to be done during bypolls.

 In April, the poll panel set up a seven-member technical advisory group chaired by Rajat Moona, the former director general of the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing and with experts from IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) in Madras, Delhi and Bombay as members to work on a plan to develop a ‘remote voting framework’.

 Moona said a ‘prototype demonstration’ will be done in a month to ECI. “We are looking at an EVM which instead of a paper ballot for a specific constituency will have a dynamic candidates’ list display to allow one to vote for a candidate in one’s home constituency.

 “Each machine will be able to help voters of multiple constituencies cast the ballot instead of being specific to one constituency. New machines will have to be brought in for the purpose, and we hope to share the conceptual plan and prototype soon with the EC, which will take a final decision on it,” Moona said.

 The study group has identified two key challenges: Minimal internet use with high safety features. Current EVMs do not use any internet and, therefore, are considered ‘hackproof’. The second challenge will be formulating a protocol for vote counting, VVPAT (Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail) checks and verification for ballots cast using the dynamic EVMs.

 “The latter is the toughest part, and we are looking at a few choices for the purpose of counting and VVPAT verification. In April, the poll panel set up a seven-member technical advisory group to work on a plan to develop a ‘remote voting framework’.

 “ECI’s inputs and views on the right choice will be taken. We hope to have clarity by January so that we can plan pilot projects and ultimately scale up the use of the machine in the next Lok Sabha election in 2024,” Moona added.

 The ECI is planning a technology shift along with the proposed postal ballot-based voting for NRIs. Incidentally, when consultations were held with political parties on allowing postal ballot for NRIs, many in the opposition, including the Congress Party, argued that steps need to be first taken to ensure domestic migrants are able to vote, regardless of geographic location. The ECI itself has been alive to the issue of domestic voters missing out for a while now.