delhi

Updated: Feb 12, 2010 01:37 IST

The BJP’s discomfort with electronic voting machines (EVMs) refuses to die down.

Party president Nitin Gadkari will release a book by the BJP’s election analyst, G.V.L. Narasimha Rao on Friday. Rao’s Democracy at Risk questions the very constitutional validity of EVMs and even cites the ways they can be hacked.

A few days ago, senior BJP leader L.K. Advani had asked the Election Commission to remove doubts about the fairness of EVMs. He also favoured Parliament to pass a law modelled on the measures taken by 32 of the 50 US states mandating that EVMs be used only if there is a paper back up for every vote cast electronically.

EVMs reached India in a limited way in 1982 and have been in use since the 2004 general elections when the paper ballots were phased out completely.