TS Krishnamurthy Former CEC, Ghanshyam Tiwari Spokesperson of Samajwadi Party, Sudhanshu Mittal Leader of BJP and Sanjay Jha Spokesperson of Congress discussed whether the demand is a genuine demand and how much of it is just a political ploy ahead of elections.

TS Krishnamurthy, Former CEC said, "This doesn't shock me at all. Every political party is entitled to have its view but the proposal that they have made that you should go back to the ballot system is little surprising because it is a retrograde step. The electronic voting machines have served us well and if you have any doubts certainly you suggest but you cannot ask for changes on the basis of apprehensions and doubts.

"The Punjab chief minister who is now there he has already praised the electronic voting machine, he came to power, he went up to Supreme Court, Jayalalithaa went up to Supreme Court but none of them could prove any fault in the system. We cannot be agreeing to apprehensions. We have to remove the apprehensions by solid facts. If you can tell me how it can be manipulated or it has been manipulated, it is very unfair to see that you ask for improvement in the system but not for going back to the old system," he added.

Sanjay Jha, Spokesperson, Congress said, "There are also very senior election commissioners with very good past experience who have said that if there is even an iota of doubt on the infallibility of the EVM machine then political system has a right to definitely ensure that those faultlines are corrected."

"So, there are different viewpoints and in a democracy everything is welcome. The more critical point that we are actually pointing out is the fact that today in a democracy if you vote and I vote and they are actually going to some other political party, then that is a mockery of democracy, even one vote is sacrosanct and should never be tallied wrongly," he said.

Sudhanshu Mittal, Leader of BJP said, "How is it that every time they lose they blame these EVMs? I think they are cry-babies. They have to have an explanation for the dismal performance they have been showing. In all the by-elections they actually lost their deposits."

"So they are not players and because they are not players in the current political scenario they must come with an explanation to satisfy their own cadre that we lost not because of rejection by the people. They say go back to the ballot paper, do we want to go back to the days when there was large scale booth capturing and goons using the ballot paper and using the symbol for fixing the vote and then pushing it down to the ballot papers, is this what we want to go down to?" he said.

Mittal further added, "There was hackathon which was organised by the election commission which asked all political parties to come and demonstrate if they have any apprehensions. But none went there. What surprises me is when you talk about 18 parties, the least they should have done was to go there and register."

Ghanshyam Tiwari, spokesperson of Samajwadi Party said, "The principle proposition is to risk proof the Indian electoral politics and electoral democracy from any kind of hacking, any kind of technology glitch or any kind of misdemeanour. If there is genuine doubt that is presented by parties that represent people's voice, that genuine doubt must be respected. I don't think that so far election commission has really faced that doubt in an open manner."

First Published:Aug 27, 2018 10:34 PM IST