Ever wondered why electronic voting machines, used in four Lok Sabha elections and 127 assembly polls since 2004, are not deployed in polls to elect the President and Vice President of India, members of the Rajya Sabha, and members of state legislative councils?
The EVMs are based on a technology where they work as aggregator of votes in direct elections such as the Lok Sabha and state assemblies.
Voters press the button against the name of the candidate of their choice and the one who bags the maximum number of votes is declared elected.
But the election of the President is held in accordance with the system of proportional representation by means of single transferable vote.
In accordance with the system of proportional representation by means of single transferable vote, every elector can mark as many preferences, as there are candidates contesting the election.
These preferences for the candidates are to be marked by the elector, by placing the figures 1,2,3, 4, 5 and so on, against the names of the candidates, in the order of preference, in the space provided in column 2 of the ballot paper.
The EVMs, officials explained, are not designed to register this system of voting. The EVM is an aggregator of votes and under the system of proportional representation, the machine will have to compute votes based on preference and it requires an altogether different technology.
In other words, a different type of EVM would be needed.
According to the August 2021 issue of 'My Vote Matters', a quarterly magazine of the Election Commission, since 2004, EVMs have been used in four Lok Sabha and 127 assembly elections.
According to the EC website, first conceived in 1977 in the Election Commission, the Electronics Corporation of India Ltd. (ECIL), Hyderabad was assigned the task to design and develop it.
In 1979 a prototype was developed, which was demonstrated by the Election Commission before the representatives of political parties on August 6, 1980. The Bharat Electronic Ltd (BEL), Bangalore, another public-sector undertaking, was co-opted along with ECIL to manufacture EVMs once a broad consensus was reached on its introduction.
The machines were first used in the assembly election in Kerala in May 1982. However, the absence of a specific law prescribing its use led to the Supreme Court striking down that election.
Subsequently, in 1989, Parliament amended the Representation of the People Act, 1951 to create a provision for the use of EVMs in elections.
A general consensus on its introduction could be reached only in 1998 and these were used in 25 legislative assembly constituencies spread across three states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi.
In the assembly elections held in May 2001 in the states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Pondicherry and West Bengal, the EVMs were used in all the assembly constituencies.
Since then, for every state assembly election, the Commission has used the EVMs.
In the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, more than ten lakh EVMs were used in all 543 Parliamentary constituencies of the country.
Niti Aayog CEO asks EV makers to recall vehicle batches involved in fires
As more and more electric two-wheelers catch fires in the country, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant on Wednesday asked EV original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to voluntarily recall batches involved in the EV fire incidents.
Speaking to CNBC, he said that the time is ripe for the EV industry to instill a sense of confidence in consumers the way global automakers do by voluntarily recalling their vehicles over fire risks.
"Manufacturing of (battery) cells isn't regulated. Battery management system needs to be strengthened. There has been a clear partnership between battery manufacturing and battery management," he was quoted as saying in the CNBC report.
Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari has said that the EV fire incidents may have taken place due to higher temperature.
You must be logged in to post a comment.