BJP leaders Ravi Shankar Prasad and Kangana Ranaut strongly defended Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in Lok Sabha, dismissing calls to return to ballot papers as a move backward to booth capturing. They highlighted court validations for EVMs and the Election Commission’s challenge for parties to hack them. Ranaut criticized the opposition’s defeatist attitude and disruptive parliamentary behavior.
NEW DELHI: With several opposition members pushing for reverting to the old ballot paper system in elections, BJP MP and former Union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Wednesday hit back, saying it would mean going back to the days of booth capturing.Participating in a debate inthe Lok Sabha on ‘election reforms’, Prasad said there are at least two dozen Supreme Court and high court judgments validating the use of electronic voting machines (EVMs). The govt has repeatedly ruled out going back to the ballot paper system as EVMs have made the election process faster and safer, he added.Prasad recalled that the Election Commission had invited parties to hack EVMs in its presence, but none turned up. “Now they are raising a hue and cry (against EVMs),” he said.Prasad lashed out at the Congress for levelling allegations of ‘vote chori’ ahead of the Bihar elections, noting that “not one plea” was received to check the EVMs after the recent state elections.On allegations of EVM tampering, another BJP member Kangana Ranaut said Congress politicians were unwilling to accept electoral defeats. “Let me tell the Congress people that the Prime Minister does not hack EVMs, he hacked people’s hearts”. She mocked demands for a return to the paper ballot system, calling it an “outdated relic of another era”. Ranaut also took on the opposition members for repeatedly disrupting Parliament. She said watching them often felt “traumatic”, adding that the MPs had repeatedly “jumped into the well, shouted ‘SIR, SIR” created a spectacle, tried intimidation and misbehaved in every possible way”.”May be, barring the last two or three days, they did not let the House run at all. We are representatives of the people; we come here to learn, especially as new MPs,” she said, accusing the Opposition MPs of turning every session into theatre.
