BJP hits back, says paper ballot will bring back booth capturing
NEW DELHI: In a rebuttal to opposition parties vociferous demand on reverting to paper ballot elections, BJP MP Ravi Shankar Prasad on Wednesday said it would mean going back to the days of booth capturing. Participating in a debate in Lok Sabha on election reforms, the former Union law minister said the opposition should not talk of returning to the old ballot paper system. There are at least two dozen Supreme Court and high court judgments validating the use of electronic voting machines (EVMs), he said. Prasad recalled that the Election Commission had invited parties to hack EVMs in its presence, but none turned up. Now they are raising hue and cry against EVMs, he said. Prasad also noted that after the recent Bihar elections, not one plea was received to check the micro-controllers of EVMs. The government has repeatedly ruled out going back to the ballot paper system as EVMs have made the election process faster and safer, Prasad said . Responding to KC Venugopals charges on removing CJI from the panel of selecting election commissioners, the BJP MP said when an elected government headed by the prime minister can be trusted with the nuclear button, why cant it be the case when selecting a good CEC or EC. He wondered why the judiciary should be included in everything when the legislature in its wisdom has passed a law with a selection committee that excluded the CJI. Participating in the debate, Union Minister and Apna Dal (S) leader Anupriya Patel said the opposition parties were making an issue out of the SIR and targeting the EC out of frustration over losing successive elections. You are very creative. Every election you make different claims such as the Constitution being under attack, reservations being taken away and vote chori (vote theft). You are hurt and because you lost the elections after all this, Patel said. Congress claimed 65 lakh votes were deleted in Bihar during the SIR without any reason. It is strange, because no one complained about it. At least 65 persons should have come forward with claims of wrongful deletions. This year, Bihar rejected their politics of fear, Patel said. There is no strength in their argument that the SIR exercise is being carried out in a hurried manner because elections are still six months away in most states, she said.
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