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2024 Lok Sabha Polls: ‘Voting must be held on paper ballots, Democracy too precious to be...’ Congress MP Manish Tewari
Congress MP Manish Tewari calls for 2024 Lok Sabha elections to be held on paper ballots instead of EVMs, citing concerns of manipulation and hacking.
2024 Lok Sabha elections: Congress MP Manish Tewari has said the 2024 Lok Sabha elections has voiced fresh misgivings over the use of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and said that voting should be held on paper ballots. He added said the exercise that defines the country's democratic character shouldn't be hostage to technology.
While speaking to news agency ANI, Tewari said, “Democracy is too precious to be left to technology. The question is not that EVMs are manipulated. The question is that EVMs can be manipulated.”
Further explaining, the Congress MP said that EVM is a machine and can be rigged and hacked.
"For the simple reason, the electronic voting machine is at the end of the day, a machine. And like any machine, it can be rigged, it can be hacked, it can be interdicted, it can be played around with, he told ANI.
Slamming the Election commission, he said, “I do not understand the paternalistic obsession of the Election Commission of India with Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). Even countries which had adopted Electronic Voting Machines have gone back to paper ballots for the simple reason that they can be interfered with. So, under those circumstances, the 2024 elections must be held on paper ballots..."
Earlier, taking to his official handle on X, Tewari had urged the Opposition bloc INDIA to include the holding of next year's elections through paper ballots as part of its agenda and push for its implementation.
"I had raised a response to an RTI answered by@ECISVEEPin the Lok Sabha where it had said it does not have the source Code of the EVMs. It is quixotic that the owners of the machines affirm that they do not know the source code of the machines they deploy but yet vouch for their integrity.INDIA alliance should make a return to paper ballots a part of its agenda and demand its implementation for the 2024 General Elections," Tweari posted on X.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court on 22 September had declined to entertain a PIL seeking an independent audit of the source code of the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) and placing such reports in the public domain. Observing that it will not venture into the “policy issue”, the top court dismissed the PIL which had also sought a direction to the poll panel to put in the public domain the audit report, if any, of EVM’s source code.
A bench of Chief Justice India DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra said “no actionable material that the poll panel acted in breach of constitutional mandate" in holding elections has been placed before it by the petitioner.
“The Election Commission is entrusted with the control over elections. Presently, the petitioner places no actionable material before this court to show that the poll panel has acted in breach of its constitutional mandate. There is no material before us which casts doubt on EVMs," the bench said
(With inputs from ANI, PTI)
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Business NewsNewsIndia2024 Lok Sabha Polls: ‘Voting must be held on paper ballots, Democracy too precious to be...’ Congress MP Manish Tewari
First Published:23 Sep 2023, 11:38 AM IST
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