16th May 2016 @ 07.50 am
Indian Elections : from Ballot Paper to EVM - I Have Cast My Vote - Have You ?
Posted on the 16 May 2016 by Sampathkumar Sampath
North Paravur, formerly known as Parur is a town,
municipality formed in 1912 Ernakulam district of Kerala. It is an old and
growing municipality.Paravur is the capital of Paravur Taluk in Ernakulam
district. It was here that EVM debuted
in India. My favorite write Srirangam
Rangarajan (Sujatha) was involved in the design and its usage.
Middle aged amongst us would remember that it was all paper
elections in our country. It was
ballots. A ballot is a device used to cast votes in an election. In British English, this is usually called a
"ballot paper". In the
traditional Ballot Paper voting system, the votes were cast by the means of the
papers in which the voter used to vote by marking the ballot paper with a
rubber stamp. Since 1998, the Commission has increased the usage of the
Electronic Voting Machine system instead of Ballot Boxes.
Those days, the voter on entering the Polling booth would be
given a ballot paper. The elector would use a rubber stamp and cast his vote in
the allotted box near the symbol of the candidate. The ballot paper would be folded and inserted
into a ballot box, which would be sealed at the end of elections and taken to
Counting centres. At times there were complaints of snatching of ballot papers,
mass rigging, and casting bogus votes by groups of persons. Life has changed
since.
The 61st Constitutional Amendment Act of 1988
reduced the voting age from 21 to 18 years for the Lok Sabha as well as
Assembly elections, providing youth the opportunity to elect the rulers.
Be it the ballot or EVM, the name of Candidates are in
English alphabetical order – to outsmart their rivals, candidates would have
their names changed to be first in the list. For example Hande, would gazette
as Ande, so that the name would appear first in the list. Even after 6 decades
of Independence, it is the symbols that make people identify their candidates /
parties than names. To reach to illiterate masses, each party spends a lot
ensuring that the voters identify their parties easily. The Election Commission, thus, has the laborious
task of allocating separate election symbols for each party and the innumerable
independent candidates. The registered parties have their symbols registered
ensuring that none other could use it, while there are free symbols made
available for the rest. The free symbols presently are slightly more than 100
for TN elections ranging from Coconut,
cot, cube, door bell, envelope, flute, gas stove, glass tumbler, grapes, green
chillies, harmonium, helmet, hockey bat ….
Earlier days, to cause confusion there would be candidates
having the same name contesting. Political parties smelt some trouble arising
out of this. Now the EC has put in place, classification into 3 categories for
the purpose of listing of names: Candidates of recognised political parties,
candidates of registered-unrecognised political parties; other (independent)
candidates. The alphabetical arrangement is done category-wise.
Recalling my memory, the ballot paper could accommodate 16
candidates – when more contested, the no. of papers increased – so 4 papers
could accommodate 64 – but there would whole lot of confusion and waste of
time. Remember that in one election in Madurantakam more than 64 contested just
to put pressure on polling process.
Modakurichi, in Erode were to top that all. In 1996 Assembly elections, a record no. 1033
candidates contested !
If it were to be printed papers, it would be more of scanning
a booklet. In Nalgonda Lok Sabha
elections in 1996 there were 480 of them, followed by Belgaum in Karnataka with
456. At Modakurichi, elections had to be postponed by a month since the
ballot papers (rather ballot books) were not ready in time. The polling time
also had to be increased by two hours. Except three (3), rest of 1030
candidates forfeited their deposit. Understand
that 88 of them did not get a single vote [not even that of the candidate !!]
and 158 for a single vote, making mockery of the process.
16th May 2016 @ 07.50 am
16th May 2016 @ 07.50 am