Casting doubts over the credibility of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy on Tuesday, June 18, said that the Election Commission of India (ECI) should adopt paper ballots.

The president of YSR Congress party who recently suffered a drubbing in the state Assembly elections, wrote, “Just as justice should not only be served, but should also appear to have been served, so should democracy not only prevail but must appear to be prevalent undoubtedly. In electoral practices across the world, in almost every advanced democracy, paper ballots are used, not EVMs. We too must move towards the same in upholding the true spirit of our democracy.”

In the recent Assembly elections, Jagan’s party suffered a major setback. The party which won with a huge mandate of 151 seats in 2019, could secure only 11 seats and was unable to retain power. The results have led to allegations of EVM manipulation by supporters of YSRCP. In the wake of this, Jagan also echoed a similar sentiment and demanded that the elections should be held with paper ballots instead. 

Andhra Pradesh went for both Assembly and Parliamentary polls on May 13. In the elections the TDP-JSP-BJP alliance dethroned Jagan. Out of the 175 Assembly seats, the alliance won 164 seats (TDP- 135, JSP- 21, BJP - 8). 

Meanwhile, recently when Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that EVMs could be hacked by humans or AI, former Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar defending the integrity of EVMs, wrote, “...Indian EVMs are custom designed,  secure and isolated from any network or media - No connectivity, no bluetooth, wifi, Internet. ie there is no way in. Factory programmed controllers that cannot be reprogrammed.”