What is the issue?
- The Election Commission (EC) recently held its meeting with all major political parties.
- The meeting is aimed at making the electoral process more transparent, inclusive and credible.
What are the major demands?
- Several state Assembly elections and the general election are approaching.
- In this context, there were three major demands:
- giving up on electronic voting machines (EVMs) and moving back to paper ballots
- linking voter identification cards to Aadhaar
- cap on election expenditure of political parties (click here to know more)
What is the tussle with EVMs?
- Most of the parties flagged the issue of malfunctioning of electronic voting machines (EVMs).
- EVMs have typically been questioned by parties after losing elections.
- However, it is claimed that EVMs are tamper-proof.
- It also eliminates booth capturing, a favourite pastime of political parties during elections.
- This is because the machines do not allow casting of more than five votes a minute.
- The provision of voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) machines has further enhanced EVMs' credibility.
- Besides, a return to the ballot paper system would also not be advisable.
- As, it would come with huge environmental costs and logistical issues.
What is the Aadhaar linkage demand?
- The demand for linking Aadhaar to voter ID cards is prompted by concerns about the existence of ghost voters.
- E.g. the Congress has complained about 6 million fake voters in the electoral rolls of Madhya Pradesh.
- It is true that Aadhaar would go a long way in eliminating these fake voters.
- But notably, Aadhaar itself is not a proof of citizenship.
- Moreover, there are privacy concerns related to Aadhaar.
- So mandating it as the final adjudicator for voting rights is questionable.
Source: Business Standard