The Election Commission of India on December 29, 2022 has sent a proposal to the Recognised 57 political parties in India soliciting their opinion on enabling domestic migrants to vote for their home constituencies from their place of stay through a new remote EVM (RVM). The parties are requested to submit their views related to legal, administrative, technological and procedural issues pertaining to RVM voting by January 31, 2023. In the meanwhile the Commission has also scheduled a demonstration of the RVM prototype for party representatives on January 16. As of now, a decision on RVM voting can come any time after January 31.
The most important reason advanced by governmental source for this use of Remote EVM or RVM is the present low voter turn-out due to the presence of around 14 crore internal migrants in India, who find it it difficult to exercise their franchise during elections. But this argument of the Modi regime is too flimsy as the RSS/BJP has no qualm in accomplishing even the lowest voter turn-out if it serves its Hindutva-fascist agenda. Hence the Election Commission’s claim in its Press Statement on the mandate with it to ensure that ‘no voter is left behind’ along withits self-proclaimed task of overcoming the phenomenon of ‘stagnating voter turnout’ as the reason to resort to ‘remote voting’ mechanism or RVM lacks credibility and intends only to hoodwink the people.
For instance, in the latest Assembly bypoll in UP’s Rampur constituency where the state election machinery merging itself with the fascist regime effectively used the police and administration to use all means at their disposal to prevent voters from Muslim-majority areas in coming to the polling booths resulting in a mere 33.94 polling there while it recorded 56.61 percent polling in 2019. Therefore, in the guise of low voting and migrants’ franchise, Modi regime’s infactuation with RVM is to be seen as inseparable from its intention to manipulate the entire polling in the coming Assembly and General elections in tune with its neofascist agenda.
In this context, leaving aside the serious doubts raised even by Election Commission in the past regarding the practicality of remote voting by migrants, it is high time on the part of all progressive-democratic forces to rise up against Modi government’s arbitrary superimposition of EVM amidst widespread public scepticism about its impartiality. For, technologically advanced and tech-friendly imperialist powers having regular parliamentary elections have banned the use EVMs in elections in their countries. On account of serious concerns among broad sections of the people regarding the security, accuracy, reliability, and verifiability of EVM-based elections, most of the countries in EU and US are still following ballot system. Many experts have shown how EVMs can be hacked at the booth level itself. Accordingly, EVM-based voting and counting does not comply with the democratic principle that every voter must be able to verify her/his vote is “cast as intended, recorded as cast, and counted as recorded.”
If the Modi government is pursing with RVM or remote voting, then it calls for many legislative changes such as amendments to the Representation of People Act, 1951 & 1952, along with alteration in the Registration of Electors Rules (1960), and Conduct of Election Rules (1961). Proper identification and definition of domestic migrant, enumeration and verification of remote voters to avoid impersonation, ensuring facilities for secure and secret voting at remote voting sites, appointment of poll and security staff for remote locations and many other procedural and administrative steps will lead to many loopholes which will give immense possibilities for the fascists who control both state power and street power at the same time.
In this regard, the CPI (ML) Red Star has been taking a consistent position against the use of EVMs in elections from the very beginning. Fully in consonance with the scientific perception regarding EVMs, the Party in its 2019 Election Manifesto had inserted a specific clause against the use of EVMs. Among other things, it says: “5.2 c. Since the possibility of insertion of malicious software in to EVMs and manipulation of voting preferences being already proved, one of the immediate tasks of the people’s government shall be a return to the ballot system.”
As such, under Modi.2, backed by corporate funding and the ideology of Manuvadi-Hiundutva, the EVM/RVM has also become an effective tool in the hands of fascists for using/manipulating elections in their maddening pace towards Hindurashtra. Therefore, the demand for withdrawal of EVM/RVM and return to ballots in the elections should form part of the immediate task of resisting and defeating RSS neofascism. The Left, progressive and democratic forces who have identified themselves with the struggling people and striving for a political alternative, while extending their anti-fascist initiatives to the arena of electoral struggles by entering into tactical alliances with all non-fascist forces should put forward the withdrawal of EVM/RVM as one of the immediate tasks.
In this context the CPI (ML) Red Star firmly resolves to carry forward the slogan of abolition EVM/RVM-based voting in the forthcoming elections to Assembly and General elections which for the RSS are a launching pad for its goal towards a majoritarian Hindutva state. The Party appeals to all like-minded forces to resolutely come forward organising nation-wide campaigns and protests raising this demand compelling the Modi regime to withdraw EVM/RVM and return to ballot-based voting at the earliest.
P J James
General Secretary
CPI (ML) Red Star
New Delhi
02/01/2023
