Joint Civil Society - Political Parties conference on 3M -Machine, Money, Media-Challenges to India's Electoral Democracy..
Press Coverage compiled by MGD
3 resolutions to fight against 'misuse' of EVMs, money power and media by Centre https://www.timesnownews.com/india/congress-10-other-opposition-parties-pass-3-resolutions-to-fight-against-misuse-of-evms-money-power-and-media-by-centre-article-93546477
सुप्रीम कोर्ट और ECI के पास प्रतिनिधि करेंगे पेश https://www.patrika.com/new-delhi-news/resolution-on-evm-and-vvpat-made-in-a-conference-by-civil-organisation-7709886/
Opposition push for fair polls https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/opposition-push-for-fair-polls/cid/1880023
11 Opposition Parties Resolve to Fight Against 'Misuse' of EVMs, Money Power and Media https://www.news18.com/news/politics/11-opposition-parties-resolve-to-fight-against-misuse-of-evms-money-power-and-media-5748499.html
https://www.deccanherald.com/national/national-politics/11-opposition-parties-resolve-to-fight-against-misuse-of-evms-money-power-and-media-1135930.html
https://www.latestly.com/agency-news/india-news-11-opposition-parties-resolve-to-fight-against-misuse-of-evms-money-power-and-media-4078489.html
https://www.business-standard.com/article/politics/11-oppn-parties-resolve-to-fight-against-misuse-of-evms-money-media-122081301031_1.html
https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/will-fight-against-electronic-voting-machine-evm-misuse-say-11-opposition-parties-3252460
https://theprint.in/india/11-opposition-parties-resolve-to-fight-against-misuse-of-evms-money-power-and-media/1081669/
https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/national/11-opposition-parties-resolve-to-fight-against-misuse-of-evms-money-power-and-media
https://english.varthabharati.in/india/11-opposition-parties-resolve-to-fight-against-misuse-of-evms-money-power-and-media
https://newz4u.site/india/will-struggle-in-opposition-to-digital-voting-machine-evm-misuse-say-11-opposition-events/
https://www.outlookindia.com/national/opposition-resolves-to-fight-against-misuse-of-evms-and-media-news-216252
https://www.amarujala.com/india-news/eleven-opposition-parties-resolve-to-fight-against-misuse-of-evms-money-power-and-media
https://youtu.be/2zgrA9spfQo (telugu)
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/11-opposition-parties-resolve-to-fight-against-misuse-of-evms-money-power-and-media-101660414745490.html
https://navbharattimes.indiatimes.com/india/11-opposition-parties-resolve-to-fight-against-misuse-of-evm-money-power-and-media/articleshow/93546858.cms
Full text of press release..
*Press Release
August 13, 2022
Eleven Parties Endorse Resolutions to Combat Machine, Money & Media Power which is Distorting Electoral Democracy in India*
Today at a joint civil society and political parties conference of more than 200 people and key parties including INC, CPIM, SP, BSP, CPI, NCP, TRS, RJD, RLD, Welfare Party & Swaraj India resolved to fight against machine, money and media power which pose the gravest challenges to democracy in India today. The conference was co-organised by Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG), Jan Sarokar and People First.
In the first session, the chair Mr. Deb Mukherji, spoke of the present scenario and the need for civil society and political parties to come together during these unprecedented times. Mr. MG Devasahayam summarised the effort of the Citizens Commission on Elections which reviewed the 3M challenges to democracy by experts in India and across the world and compiled them in the form of a published book titled- ‘Electoral Democracy? An Inquiry into the fairness and integrity of Elections in India’. Dr. Subhashis Banerji, Professor of Computer Science, IIT, Delhi presented on how EVMs can be manipulated and there is an urgent need to ensure verifiablity and auditability of the voting process. Anjali Bhardwaj, co-convenor of the National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information spoke of how the electoral bonds had opened the floodgates to unlimited anonymous big money with no information being provided to people on who is funding the parties. Pamela Philipose, senior journalist spoke of the urgent need to regulate fake news, propaganda and social media manipulation which was weaponised by BJP in elections.
In the second session leaders of eleven political parties spoke on the challenges posed by 3Ms and their views on the proposed resolutions. The resolutions which were unanimously passed are given at the end of the press release. A summary of what each leader said is given below-
Digvijay Singh of the INC expressed support for the resolutions. He said he did not trust EVMs as people couldn’t be sure where their vote went. Due to electoral bonds, people did not know where money was going and by unchecked use of money, BJP was controlling the media and in fact even funding the spread of fake news. He recounted how in many states the BJP was using money power and various agencies including ED, CBI, IT to break legislators and make governments fall and install their own.
Sitaram Yechury of CPIM said electoral bonds were smuggled in through the money bill route. He said despite multiple legal challenges to it, including one that he filed, the Supreme Court had not decided the matter even though more than 3 years had passed. He said the time has come for all political parties to join hands and start a jan Andolan to save democracy. He said the way the ECI is functioning it’s become like the Executive Council rather than an independent Constitutional body. He said the way the media was acting as a propaganda channel for the government, suppressing the voice of the opposition is for all to see. He said the CPIM endorses the resolutions.
D Raja said the CPI was in full agreement with the resolutions and had in fact adopted similar resolutions at their recent national party congress. He said the fact that 90% of the bonds were transacted in the highest denomination of Rs. 1 crore showed that this was not being given by ordinary persons showed the control of the electoral funding was completely under corporate control. He said there is no level playing field due to money and muscle power. On the issue of EVMs, D Raja said that he himself has approached Supreme Court seeking full VVPAT count. He said civil society and parties must come together otherwise a flawed electoral democracy will lead to autocracy.
Dr. Mairajuddin Ahmed of RLD said the role of big money and criminalisation has completely skewed the electoral field. He said today there is open misuse of even bureaucracy. Selling tickets for money, using criminal elements to intimidate voters is well known and documented and needs to be countered. He said such conclaves should be organised at every district in the country. He said his party fully supports the resolutions.
Jitendra Awad of NCP said his party expresses unanimous support for the resolutions. He said the fight to save democracy has to be on the streets. EVMs can be manipulated everyone knows - but where will you go for justice? The Supreme Court, the institutions are all compromised. Therefore we have to go to the court of people. Everyone saw how the BJP brought down the Maharahstra government by buying so many MLAs that they stole the whole party itself, but how do we raise a voice when no one is listening. We have to fight much more strongly and take everything to people. He said fascism is at its peak.
Suresh Reddy of TRS said no technology can be fully tamper proof and therefore any such claims of 100% error free voting must be challenged. He said even the anti defection law needs to be challenged. He said the party was in full support of the resolutions on machine, money and media power.
Danish Ali of BSP said this was a landmark meeting as it signals a historic coming together of political forces and people to save and reclaim democracy. He said the BSP was in full support of all the resolutions and will join every endeavour to take this issue to every corner of the country. He said it is imperative to fight against forces undermining India’s democracy.
Ghanshyam Tiwari of SP that when every machinery of the elections has been hijacked then how can machines remain insulated from this hijack. The fundamental principle of fair voting is that a voter should have full confidence that their vote has gone to the party they have cast it for both at the time of elections and when results are declared. He expressed full support of the party for the resolutions.
Naval Kishore of RJD said the party is committed to the resolutions and will join all efforts to tackle these distortions to electoral politics.
Mr. Ilyas of Welfare Party said the party believed that voting should happen through ballot papers and there should be proportional representation in heterogeneous societies like India. He expressed the party’s support for the repositions.
Yogendra Yadav of Swaraj India party appreciated the detailed manner in which the resolutions have been put together. He said the party fully supported all the points. He said the need was for a national effort to resist the undermining of democracy.
In the last session of the day, chaired by Aruna Roy, people from different states presented and discussed how the issues emerging from the conference can be taken forward. Nikhil Day, Thomas Franco, Rolly Shivhare, Apar Gupta, Pankti Jog, Prasanna, Dinesh Abrol, Bezwada Wilson and many others shared their views.
Press release issued by:
Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG), Jan Sarokar and People First
Contact details- Ashok Sharma 9910503396
Email id-
Resolutions passed at the Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG), Jan Sarokar and People First Joint Civil Society--Political Parties Conference held at the Constitution Club, New Delhi on 13 August, 2022.
The Conference discussed and deliberated at length the 3M [Machine, Money, Media] challenges faced by India’s Electoral Democracy and unanimously passed the following Resolutions:
1. EVM voting and VVPAT counting
It is recognised that purely EVM-based voting and counting does not comply with ‘Democracy Principles’ which require that each voter should be able to verify that his or her vote is cast-as-intended; recorded-as-cast and counted-as-recorded. We demand the following:
i. EVMs cannot be assumed to be tamper-proof. The voting process should be redesigned to be software and hardware independent in order to be verifiable or auditable.
ii. The VVPAT system should be re-designed to be fully voter-verified. A voter should be able to get the VVPAT slip and cast it in a chip-free ballot box for the vote to be valid and counted. This should not require interaction with any authorities and should not depend in any way on assumptions of correctness of machines.
iii. The integrity of the VVPAT slips and the EVM machines during the entire time after polling and before counting and auditing must be ensured in a manner that is verifiable. The VVPAT slips must be printed in such form and manner to be preserved for a minimum of 5 years.
iv. There must be stringent audit of the electronic tally for every constituency before the results are declared. The audit should be based on full manual counting of the VVPAT slips to improve voter confidence. Forms 17A and Forms 17C must be tallied and be publicly disclosed at the end of polling on the day itself. Forms 17A and 17C should also be tallied with the manual count of VVPAT printouts.
v. There is need to move away from certification of voting equipment and processes and demonstrate that the outcome of an election is correct irrespective of machines and trust on custody chains of EVMs and VVPATs. This can be done by adopting well established strategies for risk-limiting audits (RLA) or by using a provably end-to-end verifiable cryptographic protocol, or both. The ECI should explore the possibilities.
vi. The EVM voting and counting system design should be subjected to independent (of the government and ECI) review and the integrity of the election process should be subjected to independent audit. The findings should be made public and all design details should be transparent and publicly available.
Money Power
Massive money power and the criminal muscle-power created thereof is destroying the very integrity of India’s elections. Candidates expenses have a ceiling but political party spending does not have any ceiling.Thefast-rising economic oligarchy in the country, threatening India as a welfare state is the direct fallout of this extreme criminal and money power in elections which is the fountainhead of all corruption in the country. It compromises the integrity of democracy in multiple ways: it raises the entry barriers to politics; excludes honest candidates and parties; leads to corruption and big money controlling the state; distortion of policy making in wasteful, inefficient, and anti-democratic directions; and exacerbation of polarization. The government, using Money Bill route to bypass Rajya Sabha, introduced electoral bonds that has increased opaqueness and consolidated the role of big money in electoral politics. The Electoral Bonds Scheme in its current form must be immediately discontinued. There must be transparency in political party funding. Details of donations, including amounts and names of donors, should be in the public domain.
Media Power
The free media plays a crucial role before, during and after elections in creating an environment for the dissemination of information that enhances people's ability to vote in an informed way. India's mediascape has undergone a major transformation with the exponential growth in the use of the internet across the world and also in India. Unfortunately, communication technologies and media platforms are creating polarization through the circulation of disinformation and hate- filled text posts and tweets. Despite guidelines and codes, ECI has not seem to be taking cognizance of the many violations in the past elections. ECI failed to curb fake news online before and during these elections. Procrastination, silence, and inaction characterised ECI's responses even to serious violations of Model Code of Conduct and media code. We urge the ECI to take strong and effective actions against the offenders whosoever they may be.