Bengaluru: The Congress-led government in Karnataka has decided to use ballot papers in all urban local body elections, including the long-pending Bengaluru city council polls.
The Congress party has called it a “bold step towards restoring democracy”.
“Based on our experience, we want to do this. There are examples of several countries moving back to ballot papers from EVMs,” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said Friday.
The decision was taken by Siddaramaiah’s cabinet Thursday evening.
The decision has led to the ruling party and the Opposition locking horns. For over a decade now, political parties like the Congress and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) among others have questioned the reliability of EVMs, often arguing that they can be tampered with.
Though there is no conclusive evidence that EVMs can be hacked, the Opposition at the Centre has alleged that the machines are being tampered with to favour the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
India switched to EVMs in 2004, getting rid of paper ballots which had to be counted physically.
The Siddaramaiah-led Karnataka Government’s decision to use paper ballots in all upcoming ULB elections appears not just to have fed into the EVM versus ballot paper debate, but diverts attention from the fact that the state has not had any local administration at all for years now.
This includes Bengaluru, the state and country’s growth engine, which has been without an elected council since September 2020.
In June 2017, the Election Commission of India (ECI) conducted an EVM challenge where political parties were asked to demonstrate if the machines could be tampered with. Just two parties—Nationalist Congress Party and Communist Party of India (Marxist)—turned up, and even they did not participate.
But questions about the reliability of EVMs have not subsided despite the Congress having won several state elections.
Karnataka BJP president B.Y. Vijayendra said that by deciding to bring back ballot paper-based polls, the Congress has indicated it came to power in 2023 by stealing votes.
“In this context, let the 136 Congress MLAs who were elected in the state in the 2023 elections using EVMs first resign, let the nine Congress Lok Sabha members elected from the state resign, let them win the elections again using ballot papers, otherwise let them admit that they came to power through vote rigging…” Vijayendra said.
He alleged that Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the Opposition, was pushing for ballot paper votes as it would be “easier” to manipulate results.
Rahul Gandhi had alleged serious election malpractice by the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, using Bengaluru’s Mahadevapura as an example to demonstrate how the Modi-led party won in several constituencies.
He mentioned several examples, one of which was that of a single-room house where 80 people were registered as voters. Rahul Gandhi had alleged widespread voter list manipulation, fake addresses and fake voters among other irregularities in the Mahadevapura assembly segment, where the BJP had a lead of 1,14,046 votes in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Since then, ‘vote chori’ has become the Congress and INDIA bloc’s main poll platform in the upcoming Bihar elections as well.
Also read: Rahul’s ‘vote chori’ attack on EC is a political dead-end. He still has a point
‘BJP is jittery’
“To use ballot papers in local body elections is the decision of the government of Karnataka. Why is the BJP worried about it? The state government is empowered to conduct local body elections. Why is the BJP getting jittery about this?” D.K. Shivakumar, Deputy CM and state Congress president, said Friday. He added that Grama Panchayats still use ballot papers.
The Karnataka Government has also decided to prepare a separate voter list. Randeep Singh Surjewala, the Congress general secretary incharge of Karnataka said that the state preparing its own list would result in “more accuracy and transparency”.
“Apart from the State Election Commission, it is possible to update voter lists periodically at the local level. This makes it convenient to ensure that names are not dropped from voter lists or that ineligible names are not included. Since lists can be reviewed and corrected at the state level itself, elections proceed smoothly,” Surjewala said.
‘No hurdle in ballot paper use’
There are 31 districts in Karnataka, 236 talukas that have had no local elections since May 2021. Bengaluru has had no elections for five years, leaving the city at the hands of the state government and the bureaucrats-driven administration.
G.S. Sangreshi, the state election commissioner Friday told reporters that there was no specific hurdle to bring back ballot papers.
“If there are some amendments required and they (government) do it, we can go ahead with conducting polls with ballot papers,” he told media persons Friday.
He added that as the election commission, they had to follow the rules and it was not in their place to take a stand on the decision of an elected government.
The Congress’s decision further strains the INDIA bloc’s relationship with election authorities in India even though states have complete autonomy on how they conduct ULB polls.
The Central Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar had asked Rahul Gandhi to take an oath or apologise for allegations over ‘vote chori’, adding to the strain.
However, the Central Election Commission has little jurisdiction over the state’s decisions.
“ECI has no jurisdiction over state elections. All state election commissions are autonomous, statutory entities. They can decide whatever they want in the state,” Ashok Lavasa, the former CEC, told ThePrint Friday.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
Also read: 6 myths around EVM tampering
