OP Rawat, CEC speaks to ET a week before his tenure draws to a close.It is from the early 90s that the influence of black money in elections started becoming visible. This phenomenon has increased hugely. We recently visited Telangana where it is quite visible that money power is playing a big role in influencing the campaign and voters. The seizures have already exceeded all records and what we seize is probably just the tip of the iceberg. Many political party representatives who met us expressed helplessness, as they cannot match opponents in cash flow. All the ills in our election arena lie in funding and it can have disastrous consequences because if everything revolves around money, then people will become cynical about elections, think they are manipulated and, ultimately, lose faith in democracy . Merely increasing the EC’s powers cannot counter it. A strong political will is required to correct this by changing the funding laws.We have got contribution reports and audited reports of political parties and we will assess these, take a call and write to the government. While we have not done a full assessment yet, prima facie I feel that none of our concerns have been addressed in the scheme notified on January 2. Actually, there are many grey areas in this because when there is no ceiling on party expenditure and the EC cannot monitor it, how can you be sure that what is coming in is not black money as there is a secrecy of the donor. Even foreign money can come and even a dying company can give money now because the clause that insisted that only companies with minimum 7.5% profit in last three years could donate has been removed. So, prima facie it appears the scheme cannot really deliver whatever it was intended to.It is the freedom of expression of corporates. The implications of this trend are like what we just saw in Telangana: most parties said they are helpless, media is not putting out their news in public domain, they can’t have huge rallies and go out to voters that way.Unregulated expenditure, paid news and fake news are major emerging threats to any election. There are now global examples of cases where data mining and targeted communication through paid news have been able to contaminate public opinion and deliver a result which is not palatable to the public. In India, there is enormous faith in elections still and this is because of insulation from big data influences so far. We tested on a small pilot basis (the impact of social media) in Bangalore and we found near-no impact. In the (ongoing) five elections, we will assess the impact in urban centres like Hyderabad , Bhopal, Indore, etc., as well and prepare accordingly for the Lok Sabha elections. We must prepare ourselves to thwart those impacts and the EC is taking various steps and will do more.It should be given a try. The fear that when there is a wave it will sweep all election does not have any empirical basis because in 2014 one party got thumping majority in Parliament but at same time different parties were voted to power in Odisha, Arunachal, Andhra and Telangana), Sikkim.Those calling for returning to the ballot paper are not looking at the ground reality with objectivity. The ground reality is that people have realised that all the ills of the ballot system have been overcome by this machine. We have taken into account the demand to increase the count of VVPAT slips and we will accept the formula that experts suggest.I feel that it is because of loose talk and also loose behaviour of poll officials and government staff not taking EC instructions seriously which creates doubts. For example, in violation of our instructions, one polling officer took the EVM home with him when he went to lunch. Earlier, an uproar was caused when an EVM-VVPAT demo was done without the requisite first-level check: it showed a BJP symbol VVPAT slip and the officer in charge threatened journalists from writing about it. These are the things keep creating doubts in the mind of political leaders.These things happen but I personally feel that EC’s intention of doing anything as an aberration wasn't there. There was no mala fide intention. The AAP case is still sub juice with the hon’ble high court.Whenever I go abroad or talk to foreigners, I find that EC’s status and credibility are only on the rise. On criticism from in-house stakeholders, I think we need to do more to enlighten them about processes and the limitations of the existing legal framework. There is mostly lack of authentic information that sparks such criticism.