Eleven opposition parties, including the Congress, on Saturday pledged to fight against the misuse of electronic voting machines, money power and media by the BJP-led government at the Center, claiming it poses the “most serious challenge” to democracy. India. The 11 parties are Congress, CPIM, SP, BSP, CPI, NCP, TRS, RJD, RLD, Welfare Party and Swaraj India.
In a meeting of these parties held here, three resolutions were passed. At the conference, they discussed and deliberated upon the challenge of 3M – machines, money and media – facing India’s electoral democracy and unanimously passed resolutions on them.
The first proposal was on counting of EVMs and VVPATs in which he held that purely EVM based voting and counting did not follow the “principles of democracy”, which required every voter to be able to verify that His vote has been cast. – as thought; Recorded-A-Cast and Count-A-Recorded. He claimed that Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) cannot be considered tamper proof.
“The voting process should be redesigned to be software and hardware independent so as to be verifiable or auditable. The VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail) system has been redesigned to be completely voter-verified. The resolution stated that a voter should be able to obtain the VVPAT slip and put it in a chip-free ballot box so that the vote can be valid and counted. In the second resolution, the parties said that the huge money power and Criminal muscle power is destroying the integrity of India’s elections.
“There is a limit on the expenditure of the candidates but no limit on the expenditure of the political party Threat to the fast growing economic oligarchy in the country India He said that a welfare state election is a direct result of this extreme criminality and money power which is the source of all corruption in the country. The parties claimed that the government introduced the electoral bond scheme using the money bill route to bypass the Rajya Sabha, which has increased opacity and consolidated the role of big money in electoral politics. The electoral bond scheme in its present form should be discontinued immediately.
The third resolution was on how India’s mediascape has undergone a major transformation with the exponential growth in internet usage across the world and in India as well. “Unfortunately, communication technologies and media platforms are creating polarization through the spread of propaganda and hate-filled text posts and tweets. Despite the guidelines and codes, the ECI (Election Commission of India) is not taking cognizance of several violations in the last elections. The resolution states that the Election Commission has failed to curb online fake news before and during these elections.
“Delay, silence and inaction characterized the ECI’s responses even to serious violations of the Model Code of Conduct and the Media Code. We urge the Election Commission to take strong and effective action against the perpetrators, whoever they may be, as proposed. All 11 political parties gave their support to the proposals.
Congress leader Digvijay Singh said that he does not trust EVMs as people cannot be sure where their vote went and because of electoral bonds, people did not know where the money was going and uncontrolled use of money led to BJP media is controlling. Even funding for the spread of fake news. He alleged that in several states the BJP was using money power and various agencies including the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Income Tax Department to woo MLAs and form its government.
CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury said electoral bonds were smuggled through money bills. He said that despite several legal challenges, including one filed by him, the Supreme Court had not decided the matter even though more than three years had elapsed. He said that the time has come for all the political parties to join hands and start a mass movement to save democracy.
A statement quoted Singh as saying that the way Election The Commission is functioning as it has become like an executive council rather than an independent constitutional body. CPI leader D Raja said that the CPI fully agreed with the proposals and in fact they had adopted similar resolutions in the recently held National Party Congress.
RLD leader Mairajuddin Ahmed said the role of big money and criminalization of politics has completely skewed the electoral fray. He said that today there is open misuse of bureaucracy. “Selling tickets for money, using criminal elements to intimidate voters is well known and documented and needs to be countered. He said that such conferences should be organized in every district of the country.
NCP leader Jitendra Awhad said the fight to save democracy should be on the streets. “EVMs can be rigged, everyone knows – but where will you go for justice? Supreme Court, institutions are all compromising. So we have to go to the court of the people. Everyone saw how the BJP brought down the Maharashtra government by buying so many MLAs that they stole the entire party, but how can we raise our voice when no one is listening. We have to fight harder and take everything to the people. According to the statement, he said that fascism is at its peak.
TRS leader Suresh Reddy, BSP leader Danish Ali, SP’s Ghanshyam Tiwari, Welfare Party’s Ilyas and Swaraj India’s Yogendra Yadav supported the proposals. Civil rights activist Aruna Roy spoke about how the issues emerging from the conference could be taken forward.
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