Every time, anywhere, when BJP is set to win and corrupt, dynast and nepotistic parties are about to lose they blame EVMs? But when the corrupt-nepo parties win, EVMs are fair.

Lets understand why the corrupt, dynast and nepotistic parties have been on a downslide after EVMs were introduced? Why so much opposition to EVMs?

Lets look at the history of EVMs.

India used paper ballots till the 1990s. According to Arvind Verma – a professor of Criminal Justice with a focus on South Asia, Indian elections have been marked by criminal fraud and ballot tampering since the 1950s. The first major election with large scale organized booth capturing were observed in 1957. The journalist Prem Shankar Jha, states Milan Vaishnav, documented the booth capturing activity by Congress party leaders, and the opposition parties soon resorted to the same fraudulent activity in the 1960s.A booth-capture was the phenomenon where party loyalists, criminal gangs and musclemen entered the booth with force in villages and remote areas, and stuffed the ballot boxes with pre-filled fake paper ballots. This problem grew between the 1950s and 1980s and became a serious and large scale problem in states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, later spreading to Andhra Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and West Bengal accompanied with election day violence. Another logistical problem was the printing of paper ballots, transporting and safely storing them, and physically counting hundreds of millions of votes.

The Election Commission of India, led by T.N. Seshan, sought a solution by developing Electronic voting machines in the 1990s.These devices were designed to prevent fraud by limiting how fast new votes can be entered into the electronic machine. By limiting the rate of vote entered every minute to five, the Commission aimed to increase the time required to cast fake ballots, therefore, allow the security forces to intervene in cooperation with the volunteers of the competing political parties and the media.

Due to the above reasons EVMs made booth capturing difficult or nearly impossible.

The use of EVMs, their reliability and speculations about fraud through the use of EVMs have been the subject of many lawsuits before state high courts and the Supreme Court of India. These courts have either dismissed the cases as frivolous or ruled in the favor of the Election Commission and the EVMs. Of these, in the 2002 ruling on the J. Jayalalithaa and Ors vs. Election Commission of India case, the Supreme Court of India stated that the use of EVMs in elections was constitutionally valid.

And when the corrupt, dynast and nepotistic parties lose, they cry by blaming the EVMs in memory of the golden days where they won by means of booth capturing and ruled (in other words looted) the nation. Indian judiciary is extremely neutral(the Govt doesn’t appoint the Judges and Govt cannot remove them also). With Supreme Court endorsing the EVMs there should be no doubt on it.

Indian voters are not stupid to keep the dynastic and corrupt parties in power so long. And hence, it is no coincidence after the EVMs were introduced, the Gandhis and other corrupt dynasts have been on a downslide.

It is therefore important that everyone understands the reason behind the corrupt dynasts” crocodile tears in opposing the EVM.

 

 

 

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