NEW DELHI (TD) — Janata Dal president Vish wanath Pratap Singh ex pressed apprehension that the proposed use of electronic voting machines in the forthcoming general elections would lead to large scale rigging and a “Criminal Hijacking of Democracy.”
Addressing a press conference here where a demonstration of the voting ma chine was given by an independent consultant. Singh said “A decision has already been taken by the ruling patty on the use of such machines.”
He said his party has written to the President and the Election Commission on the use of these machines.
He said despite safety precautions being taken. “There is no security in the system and no amount of checking and counter checking can eliminate the possibility of placing a Trojan horse — undetectable commands hidden in a computer programme which can benefit any one candidate.
Singh said although his party was “open minded regarding the use of electronic voting machines, but the conduct of the president ruling clique to hold back information from Parliament and people” had raised serious doubts in their minds.
Singh said his party would interact with other Major opposition parties on this matter and they had already written to them eliciting their opinion on this subject.
He said the electronic voting machine was proposed to be used in 150 constituencies “where the op position has always held sway”, and charged the government with fixing elections and arranging the programming of the machines.
In the letter to the president and the election commission, the party demanded that the complete details of the hardware and any other software to be present in the machine should be made available to a panel of experts with nominees from the major political parties for verification.
Article extracted from this publication >> October 20, 1989
