11 Oppn parties resolve to fight against 'misuse' of EVMs

new delhi: Eleven Opposition parties, including the Congress, on Saturday resolved to fight against what they called the misuse of electronic voting machines, money power and the media by the BJP-led government at the Centre, claiming it poses the "gravest challenge" to democracy in India. The 11 parties are the Congress, CPIM, SP, BSP, CPI, NCP, TRS, RJD, RLD, Welfare Party and the Swaraj India.

Three resolutions were passed at a conference attended by these parties here.

At the conference, they discussed and deliberated at length the challenge of 3Ms -- machine, money and media -- faced by India's electoral democracy and unanimously passed the resolutions on them.

The first resolution was on EVM and VVPAT counting in which they said that it is recognised that purely EVM-based voting and counting does not comply with "democracy principles" which require that each voter should be able to verify that his or her vote is cast-as-intended; recorded-as-cast and counted-as-recorded.

They claimed EVMs cannot be assumed to be tamper-proof. "The voting process should be redesigned to be software and hardware independent in order to be verifiable or auditable. The VVPAT (voter verifiable paper audit trail) system should be re-designed to be fully voter-verified. A voter should be able to get the VVPAT slip and cast it in a chip-free ballot box for the vote to be valid and counted, the resolution stated.

In the second resolution, the parties stated how massive money power and the criminal muscle-power created thereof is destroying the very integrity of India's elections.

The third resolution was on how India's mediascape has undergone a major transformation with the exponential growth in the use of the internet across the world and also in India.