BJP state chief seeks software to mix votes

MUMBAI: One of the assets of an electronic voting machine (EVM) is that it gives you information on not just the number of votes polled but voting patterns as well. However, political parties aren’t exactly celebrating the fact.
Unlike the days of discreet counting of votes by mixing the ballot papers, the EVM will enable the counting agent of a candidate to find out which areas voted for him, and more importantly, which did not.And politicians are fearful that this information could be misused.
One such— BJP state general secretary Vinod Tawde—has written to the Election Commission asking it to develop a software to ensure that the machines are electronically linked. “The new system completely defeats the premise of a secret ballot,’’ he says.
“It runs contrary to the previous EC diktat of mixing votes to protect the secrecy of voting trends in a particular area.’’ Tawde, an electronics engineer, insists that developing such a software will not be difficult or expensive.
The logic behind the BJP politico’s vociferous demand to conceal voting trends is that a winner might be tempted to be indifferent to the development of an area that has not voted for him. “He could well blacklist the area when it comes to spending his Rs 2-crore MP fund,’’ he says.
Gurunath Kulkarni of the Nationalist Congress Party echoes Tawde’s contention that the machines must be ‘mixed’ if possible. “Access to voting trends for each polling station is not a new phenomenon, as this was possible before 1995,’’ he says.
“However, back then, MPs and MLAs did not get money for the development of their constituencies.’’
Senior Janata Dal-S leader Mrinal Gore believes that although Maharashtra has not had a history of vengeful behaviour on the part of victorious candidates towards areas that did not vote for them, political parties are changing. “One fears that certain communities could be targetted by the winners,’’ she observes.
The EC, however, does not feel there is a problem. “After declaring the results of an election, we hand over a document, ‘Form 20’, to the candidate, listing details of the poll results, such as the total number of votes polled by each candidate in each round of counting,’’ say EC sources.