New Delhi, Jan 24 : Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora on Thursday said that the Commission is always open to all kinds of feedback from all stakeholders particularly the political parties, however added that the poll body is not going to be intimidated and not going back to the ballot paper days.
Mr Arora along with Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa was talking at an international conference on ‘making our elections inclusive and accessible’, organised by the Election Commission on the occasion of the 9th national voters day, which is observing on January 25.
“ECI is always open to all kinds of feedback in all forms from all stakeholders particularly the political parties who are the most significant stakeholders after the voters. (But) ECI is not going to be intimidated, coerced or pressurized into going back to ballot papers days”, Mr Arora said in his keynote address.
Mr Arora also said that the position has been consistently maintained by successive Commissions and the same will be maintained in the future.
“In ballot paper era there used to be innumerable complaints about impersonation and booth capturing by anti-social elements and musclemen etc. besides the inordinate delays in declaring results which sometimes spread from three to four days”, he pointed out.
Referring to the allegations on the EVM tampering, he said the poll body kept a robust technical and administrative mechanism to safeguard the integrity of EVM.
“VVPATs have further enhanced the transparency of votes for the voters”, he said.
In context of the recent aspersions cast on EVMs used in elections, Mr Arora denounced the targeting of the machines, which ‘unnecessarily are being dragged into motivated slugfest’.
“EVMs have been in use for the last two decades. Even in several elections since 2014, the machines have given different results in different elections.” Mr Arora mentioned that even in the recent elections in the five states, out of a total of 176,000 polling booths where EVMs were used, there were six incidents of violation of standard operating procedure, that too in reserved EVMs not used in the actual elections.
“Although the ratio is negligible but even in these cases stringent disciplinary action was taken and ECI has and always will have zero tolerance to any kind of errors in the election process,” he reiterated.
He also stated that free, fair, transparent, credible and ethical elections are critical to the legitimacy of a democratic government.
“It is imperative that the voice of all categories of voters is included in democratic representation. Inclusive elections coupled with characteristics such as transparency, accountability and competitiveness add to the strength of democratic polity”, Mr Arora added.
