EC may abandon EVMs in Andhra bypolls

Swamped with a deluge of candidates for the upcoming bypolls to 12 seats in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly, the Election Commission is likely to abandon the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and revert to ballot papers and manual counting of votes.

So, 11 years after the country switched to EVMs, voters in the 12 Telangana constituencies will once again be depending on paper ballots, ballot boxes and manual counting of votes in the July 27 bye-elections.

This is because more than 85 candidates are in the fray in each of these constituencies and the EVMs can be used only if the number of candidates in a constituency is less than 64.

"The EC would have no option but to abandon EVMs and go back to the old practice if the number of candidates exceeds 64," an Election Commission official said.

A final decision will be taken only after Monday, the last date for withdrawals.

Sources said this peculiar situation had arisen after Telengana Rashtra Samiti President K Chandrasekhara Rao told his party that he wanted as many Independents as possible to file nomination papers since he suspected that the EVMs were not reliable.

The TRS says it fears the Congress may try to manipulate the machines to win the polls.

TRS leader Sudarshan Reddy, however, dismissed the allegations of his party being behind the nomination of large number of independents. "It is true that we oppose EVMs. We expressed our reservations to the EC and we got a reply. But, it is not correct to say that we are behind this," he said.

Chief Election Commissioner Navin Chawla discussed the issue at a high-level meeting with the Home Secretary Gopal K Pillai and others on Saturday.

But government officials and EC are worried that this strategy could be replicated in future elections by parties which did not want to use EVMs.

Recently, BJP leader L K Advani has also demanded a return to ballot papers: "We should revert to ballot papers unless the EC is able to ensure that EVMs are foolproof and every possibility of their malfunctioning is taken care of," Advani had said.

The EC has assured political parties that its expert committee, after a "meticulous study, has ruled out the possibility of any tampering with EVMs".