EVM Randomizaton: A step to reduce the trust deficit

 In my earlier post I mentioned how a trust deficit in EVM has become a big issue for our democratic set up and how Election commission is responding to  it. The new CEC (chief election commissioner) has taken some good measures to ensure a trust building for EVMs too.

He has tried to minimize or virtually zeroed the chances of tempering using randomization at two layers.These are some of the excerpts of the EC announcement.

"There are two firsts related to the forthcoming election. With increasing demand to replace Electronic Voting Machines with ballot paper, EC, for the first time, has planned a two-stage randomisation of these machines to prove that they cannot and, are not, manipulated.


In the first stage, all EVMs stored in the district storage center will be randomized by the district election officer in the presence of representatives of recognized political parties for allocation assembly constituency wise. After the EVMs in a constituency are prepared for poll by the returning officer and the ballot units are fitted with ballot papers, the EVMs will again be randomized to decide the actual polling stations in which they will be ultimately used. The second stage randomisation will also be done in the presence of observers and candidates or their election agents. "

Apart from these corrective measure  Chief Election Commissioner S Y Qureshi also disclosed that  commission’s new set of instructions to control the influence of money power in elections are ready for implementation in the Bihar Assembly elections.

on paid news he said it should be a seen in the context of the overall control of money power.


Qureshi also announced steps to curb the influence of muscle power and said vulnerability mapping would be done to identify sensitive booths.


“In addition to the voting trend and the history of violence, many other factors like background of the candidates will also be considered to map sensitive booths. Accordingly, preventive measures will be taken,” he said.

All the above steps are definitely a start of election reforms in small way where EC can do it by own and should be appreciated in this regard.