Readers may remember the bold declaration that the Union Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions made about the NDA II government’s commitment to transparency while replying to the debate on the Bill to amend The Right to Information Act, 2005 in the Lok Sabha.

On July 22, the minister said:

“Now, coming straight to RTI, as far as RTI is concerned, let me first make it clear this government has been absolutely committed, as in other wings of governance, to ensure full transparency and full accountability.”

Sadly, this philosophy of governance does not seem to have percolated downwards beyond the corridors of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) with which the Union minister is associated.

In June, 2019 I had sought detailed information about electronic voting machines (EVMs), voter verified paper trail (VVPAT) units and symbol loading units (SLUs), from Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL) and Electronics Corporation of India Ltd (ECIL) by filing identical requests under the RTI Act.

When compared with the ECI’s claims about the maximum capacity of VVPATs to print votes cast through EVMs and contrasted against the polling station level voter turnout data as compared with the number of voters registered on the electoral rolls (all of these are public documents), the nature of the RTI replies throw open disturbing questions about the entire electoral process.

Background

The April-May 2019 general elections brought the NDA government to power with a thumping majority.

Dissatisfied with the scanty information about the manner in which the polls were conducted across the country, several private citizens and media persons have used the RTI Act to seek information about voter turnout data mismatches, complaints about EVMs malfunctioning, complaints about mismatch of EVMs and VVPAT printouts, movement of EVMs and VVPATs to the electoral constituencies from the manufacturing companies and details of action taken on complaints received against high profile politicians for violating the Model Code of Conduct.

Many of these requests have been turned down by the relevant public authorities.

Also read: The Curious Case of Chhattisgarh’s Voter Turnout

After closely scrutinising some of the information and statistics published by the ECI, on June 17, 2019, I decided to file two identical RTI applications seeking the information from BEL and ECIL. Neither these companies nor the ECI have placed this information in the public domain.

BEL’s replies

The CPIO of BEL, a navaratna public sector enterprise under the Union Ministry of Defence, sent a fee intimation letter for INR 1,434 for a total of 717 pages after almost a month had passed since the submission of my RTI application.

He agreed to supply most of the information but denied access to the VVPAT patent application filed with the office of the Controller General of Patents by citing Section 8(1)(d) of the RTI Act. Then I waited for more than a month for this information thinking that the delay might be because of the time taken to copy more than 700 pages of records. After 40 days had passed, on August 28, 2019, I filed a first appeal under Section 19(1) of the RTI Act challenging the non-supply of information.

Believe it or not, the CPIO who was silent until then, sent a reply returning the bank draft and claimed that BEL did not have most of the information which he had agreed to supply in his first reply.

The CPIO also rejected one of the queries stating that disclosure would “endanger the life of its engineers” and returned the bank draft that I sent them as fee payment.

ECIL’s reply

Earlier, ECIL had uploaded some of this information on the online RTI portal but rejected access to some crucial bits of information I had sought in my RTI application. I have not received a formal reply from ECIL that has been signed by its Central Public Information Officer, via email or post till date.

Although ECIL’s CPIO had disposed of my RTI application earlier, in August, 2019, I decided to wait for the BEL CPIO’s reply before going public with these RTI interventions.

What is problematic with these replies?

BEL’s CPIO had initially agreed to supply information about the number of EVMs (control and ballot units), VVPATs manufactured by the company, and the thermal paper rolls used in the VVPATs which had been sent to the districts for use during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. He had also agreed to supply a list of the names of engineers who took part in and coordinated and supervised the preparation of these machines for the elections.

He had physically counted the number of pages relatable to each RTI query and demanded fees accordingly. In his revised reply, however, he states that BEL does not hold most of the requested information.

Also read: Amending the RTI Act Is About Cutting Troublesome Citizens Down to Size

So which papers did he count before sending the first reply? Only one of these replies, not both, can be true.

Perhaps the latest reply is an afterthought arising out of pressure exerted, probably by an external agency, against making this information public. I hope the identity of this external agency is revealed during the appeal proceedings in the coming months.

What do these replies reveal?

The total number of votes cast in an assembly or parliamentary constituency is recorded on Form 20 (called the ‘final result sheet’) by its presiding officer and submitted to the ECI.

This information for every constituency, collected in Form 20, has been uploaded on the ECI’s website for the Lok Sabha elections and state assembly elections up to 2018. However, similar data is not available for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections on the ECI’s website.

Any interested person is now compelled to visit the websites of the chief electoral officers (CEOs) of every state and Union Territory, separately, to access this information.

Even here, there is no uniformity. While many CEOs have uploaded Part 1 of Form 20 which contains polling station-wise data of the number of votes cast (for example, see the Delhi CEO’s website), a few have published only Part 2 of Form 20 which contains aggregate data for each assembly segment of a parliamentary constituency (for example, see Bihar CEO’s website).

Also read: Who’s Afraid of the RTI Act?

It is, however, the polling station-wise data that throws up some crucial questions when compared with the ECI’s claims and the RTI replies of BEL and ECIL. The details of the issues can be found here.

A credible basis

Two-stage randomisation of EVMs and VVPATs, once before their allotment to each constituency and then before sending them to each polling station, is one of the two pillars on which the ECI, the manufacturing companies and technical experts rest their arguments for the non-tamperability of these machines.

If the capacities of the VVPATs produced by BEL and ECIL vary, can there ever be a true randomisation, given the lack of uniformity in the number of voters registered for each polling station?

This is a seminal question that the ECI as the owner of the EVMs and VVPATs must answer urgently.

I would like to end this piece with a caveat. I am not alleging any wrongdoing by any authority through this research and analysis. All that I am pointing out is that the ECI and the manufacturing companies are reluctant to place detailed information about the working of EVMs and VVPATs beyond what they decide that the citizenry must know. This is just not acceptable.

Venkatesh Nayak is programme head of the Access to Information Programme of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative.