Because, as a story published by The Quint has already shown, the engineers who upload this sensitive information into VVPAT machines are from private companies. In fact, the private company that provided engineers to the Election Commission for elections during 2017-18 was not even empanelled with the EVM manufacturing company ECIL.

Can we still consider our election process to be safe and secure? The answer is a clear NO.

Another defence offered by the EC is that of randomisation – that nobody knows which EVM-VVPAT is headed to which constituency, so they can’t be manipulated.

BUT, this argument now falls flat! WHY?

Because for the VVPAT machine to do its job, it has to be given the candidate and party names specific to each constituency, which means, this data can only be uploaded into a VVPAT machine after it is decided WHICH constituency it is being sent to.

We have asked the Election Commission these key questions:

Why does the VVPAT machine control the information reaching the control unit?

Why isn’t it the other way around?

And doesn’t this flaw make the VVPAT-EVM combination vulnerable to manipulation?

The Election Commission has not answered any of these questions yet.

As a voter, each one of us has the right to know that our election process is safe and our democracy is not at risk. We wonder why the EC is silent.