There are such strong divisions in our highly polarised polity that even a basic agreement on the fundamentals of our constitutional system elude us. That is highly regrettable. The manner in which various political parties, especially those which happen to be currently in the Opposition, have taken to habitually question the credibility of the electronic voting machines that it poses a challenge to our democratic system. Without faith in the autonomy and fairness of the EC our democracy is reduced to a sham perpetrated in every five-year cycle in which tens of millions participate only to find their votes hijacked by the hacked EVMs.
At least that is the spiel coming from the mouths of various parties which end up losing one or the other election. Instead of sincerely analysing the causes of their loss, they find a ready-made scapegoat in EVMs. Time and again, the EC has challenged the critics to buttress their charge that the EVMs can be hacked either through wireless signalling or through pre-poll tinkering. Time and again, leaders of political parties hurling the untenable charge have refused to come forward and establish before the world that what they claim is true and prove-able. Yet, like a broken gramophone record, politicians continue to shout that EVMs are not foolproof.
There are some who want to go back to the paper ballots, which lent themselves easily to bogus voting. Some others want a hundred percent paper trail, something akin to writing simultaneously on computer and on paper, a waste of time and money both. The latest chapter in this sorry saga unfolded earlier in the week when someone claiming to be a cyber expert alleged that in 2014 Lok Sabha poll EVMs were hacked. The Congress-led UPA was in power when the poll was held.
The charge was made at a press conference in London at which Kapil Sibal was present. It is unfortunate that such an ace lawyer failed to see the con job Syed Shuja, the so-called cyber expert, was doing at the behest of those who claim to be the overseas friends of the Congress Party.
It was a cock-and-bull story from the start to end. But Sibal dignified it with his presence at the press conference. And later kept on justifying the foolishness by repeating it while seeking investigation into it. The sheer horrendousness of the charges was breathtaking. Shuja claimed to have been part of the design team at the public sector Electronics Corporation of India, a claim denied as completely false. The ECIL said that at no time was Shuja on its rolls. There was no question of his being associated in the design and development of EVMs.
Shuja claimed, and Sibal immediately broadcast, that a dozen or so ECIL employees who were part of the conspiracy to tinker with the EVMs had all been killed during the Hyderabad riots as part of a plot hatched by the BJP. The Hyderabad police dubbed the claim as false. No such persons as named by the Congress’s cyber expert were killed. In any case, only three people died in those riots and whose identity was duly established — while Messrs Shuja and Sibal have killed 10 to 12 person as per the BJP-hatched conspiracy. Well, some people do need to get their heads examined but who they are we will leave it to the people to judge.
Further, the organisations under whose aegis in London the so-called press conference was held are now at pains to distance themselves from it. The Foreign Press Association while distancing itself from the whole charade went on to say that ‘not one of the accusations of Shuja have so far been corroborated.’ In all likelihood, FPA was roped in by the head of the Indian Journalists Association since the latter was not only a co-sponsor of the scam but its current head and is an unabashed supporter of Sibal’s party.
He has since been rebuked publicly by a large number of journalist-members of the IPA. Meanwhile, the FIR lodged by the EC against Shuja and others ought to be pursued vigorously and efforts made to reveal the identity of those behind the conspiracy to tarnish the democratic system with this outlandish tissues of lies.