Mamata Banerjee Raises ‘EVM Manipulation’ Bogey Again, Claims Opposition Front Will Discuss It At Mumbai Meet

Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has raised the bogey of ‘EVM manipulation’ again and has claimed that the issue will be on the agenda of the next meeting of the anti-BJP front (I.N.D.I.A) in Mumbai.

Banerjee alleged Thursday (3 August) evening that the BJP is “making various arrangements to hack electronic voting machines (EVMs)”. “We have some evidence and information on this and are looking for more,” she added. 

The Chief Minister referred to an unpublished and controversial paper by the junior teacher of a private university which claimed that the 2019 parliamentary elections were “manipulated”. 

Titled 'Democratic Backsliding in the World's Largest Democracy', the so-called research paper by Sabysachi Das, an assistant professor of economics at Ashoka University, suggests there was “possible manipulation of results” in some closely-contested seats by the BJP in the last Lok Sabha elections. 

The University has distanced itself from the paper and said that “it has not completed a critical review process” and “has not been published in any academic journal”. 

That has not, however, stopped some anti-BJP parties from using the unreviewed paper with its unproven and highly-debatable conclusions to raise doubts over India’s stellar electoral process. 

To be sure, Das, in his paper, rules out EVM manipulation. He emphasised that he does not consider the possibility of manipulation of EVMs as a mechanism of electoral manipulation, as given their technology, it is hard to manipulate them at scale.

But Mamata Banerjee seems to have drawn her own conclusions from the paper to suit her suspicious peeve against EVMs. 

Banerjee and her party have, since coming to power in Bengal in 2011, questioned EVMs and alleged that they can be hacked. But Trinamool leaders have consistently failed to prove their allegations about EVM manipulation. 

The Election Commission of India (ECI) has, on a number of occasions in the past, asked political parties who allege that EVMs can be manipulated to publicly demonstrate such manipulation. But none of them have taken up the offer. 

Why Mamata Banerjee is against EVMs

Mamata Banerjee has been opposed to the use of EVMs on the ground that (according to her) they can be manipulated.

Her current stance against EVMs is exactly the opposite of the one she vociferously took when her party was in the opposition in Bengal. 

She used to frequently allege that the Left Front had been rigging elections through stuffing ballot boxes with fake ballot papers, replacing ballot boxes and manipulating the counting of ballot papers. She had then demanded that EVMs be used in all elections in Bengal. 

But that faith in EVMs vanished once she came to power in the state. She has turned down repeated demands of the Opposition parties to introduce EVMs in the panchayat elections which are heavily rigged in Bengal. 

And she has demanded that EVMs be replaced with ballot boxes in Assembly and Parliamentary polls.

Manipulation, or rigging, was on full display in the recently-held panchayat polls in Bengal. Polling booths were ‘captured’ by Trinamool workers who marked ballot papers and stuffed them into ballot boxes. 

Casting of fake votes by Trinamool workers were reported from all over the state. Opposition parties have also alleged that Trinamool functionaries,  in league with pliant poll officials, opened seals of ballot boxes and took out ballot papers marked in favour of Opposition parties. 

Ballot papers stamped in favour of Opposition candidates were recovered from many places after counting was over. At many places, Trinamool candidates were found to have secured more votes than the total number of voters in their constituencies. 

The Trinamool is also accused of having rigged the counting of ballot papers in many places. Trinamool goons intimated counting agents of Opposition parties in counting centres into silence or chased them away from those centres before ‘fixing’ the results. 

All this is not possible with EVMs. It is not possible to stuff EVMs with fake votes, or break their seals and manipulate the recorded results, or even rig the counting of votes cast.