EVMs walk tight rope as nation pins its hope on them

Raipur, Nov 11: Its D-day for the Chhattisgarh government and democracy today as the first phase of elections are underway in the state. But, it is testing for the Election Commission, the Supreme Court and the EVMs too. The much-acclaimed 'negative voting' and the subsequent replacement of the EVM machines for the Assembly Elections in five different states this year will now be tried.

20-23 EVMs malfunctioned at 10:20 am in Chhattisgarh.

The 2-phased Chhattisgarh elections, for instance, faces a number of bottlenecks, be it in terms of security in the Naxal-hit areas or the EVMs. While IEDs are being recovered and detonated, threat calls from the Mao being ignored, there are others that interest common man even more-the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). While few of them are alleged to have been stolen, there are cases where they have malfunctioned too. Though not for a very long time, but they still have made a difference in the waiting-time of casting votes.

At around 10:20 am today, 20-23 EVMs failed to respond in Kanker and the voting process was stalled. However, they are said to have been replaced immediately. Although there are no existing information on the time span witnessing the complete malfunction, this does raise a question on the efficiency of the machines. True, we cannot rule out the possibility of technical error, but for a crucial election like that of Chhattisgarh, the EC does have some serious answering to do.