Hyderabad: Every technology component, be it electronic voting machines, the Election Commission of India website, Naa Vote app, suffered glitches, letting down voters during the Assembly elections on Friday.
Voting began late in some polling centres due to technical glitches in EVMs. Voting commenced half an hour late at the booth at MS Maktha where Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan and his wife Vimala cast their votes. Badminton star P.V. Sindhu had to return without voting as the EVM was malfunctioning, thus delaying polling in Kokapet. Hyderabad police commissioner Anjani Kumar and TJS chief Prof. M. Kodandaram had to wait for an hour as officials tried to replace glitch-ridden EVMs.
The voting machines did not work in polling booths in Banjara Hills, Amberpet, Badradri, Kamareddy, Obulreddy school, Mellacheruvu PS, Kukatpally, Serilingampally, Medipally, Kondapur, Bhupalapally, Asifabad, Adilabad, Jendapur, Veldurthi, Uppal, Khairtabad and Shantinagar. According to the EC, 754 ballot units were replaced, which is 1.98 per cent of the units deployed. Officials also replaced 628 control units, 1.9 per cent of the total deployed. The EC said 1,444 VVPATS had been replaced, 4.4 per cent of the total.
According to Chief Electoral Officer Rajat Kumar, “As compared to most other places, this is good performance. The failure rates of EVMs are well within limits. The failure of control units was a little higher than expected because there was a block failure.”
There were additional complaints about inadequate lighting in the voting compartments, causing inconvenience to voters in identifying the candidates.
All the options that the EC provided for people to check their polling stations stopped working.
The EC website was inaccessible. Even the SMS option did not work as the message was not sent. The Naa Vote app did not work, so people had to walk to polling stations to find out details. This was due to the increased load on the server.
Experts opined that the EC failed to realise that there was an increase in Internet penetration in the country over the past one year and did not prepare itself.
According to Mr Kiran Chandra, general secretary of the Free Software Movement of India, “The Election Commission should scale up its servers to handle the traffic, considering the increase in Internet penetration. These instances only showcase the unpreparedness of the EC. The EC kept rubbishing EVM complaints which have been proved true.” Experts pointed to the need to standardise websites. Mr Srinivas Kodali, independent security researcher, said, “Many voters have been complaining about the Election Commission website.”
