The Election Commission (EC) is taking various steps to cleanse the election process, and one such is the ‘safer’ electronic voting machine (EVM), coming in by March-end. In a free-wheeling discussion with BusinessLine in his office at the EC headquarters here, Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi outlined some other initiatives the EC is considering, including making bribing a cognisable offence. Edited excerpts:

Both the Prime Minister and President have spoken of simultaneous polls to Parliament and State assemblies. Any movement on this?

The Commission has had no formal communication in this regard. Someone has to tell us.

What is the earliest that simultaneous polls are possible if they were to happen?

First, you need an amendment. We can only give our timeline. Let us say there is an amendment; you will need to produce EVMs and voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) machines . Our companies are saying very realistically they will need 24-30 months. Then there is the planning part, the para military etc. It will have to be held in multiple phases.

After the Maharashtra local body elections there is again a campaign against EVMs. You have started pushing VVPAT. Will this technology be adopted in all elections?

You might be aware of the Supreme Court order where it has asked the EC and the government to introduce VVPAT in all elections in phases. Because this requires huge investments and involves production issues, the EC is in correspondence with the government to allocate funds. Ideally, all over the country, VVPAT will have to be introduced. We are awaiting funds and production. Till now we have 20,000 such machines which we are using time and again.

This time we added roughly another 32,000 machines and ran this process in 112 constituencies (in the five States where polls concluded on March 8). We hope that in due course funds will be provided, production lines will be set and more constituencies will be covered by VVPAT. This is a demand coming even from citizens.

What is the approximate cost?

Approximate cost is above ₹5,000 crore. At the same time we say that our EVMs are 100 per cent safe. Our current set of machines is totally safe; they cannot be tampered with. Yet we are evolving a new model by the end of this month which will have more security features — like if you try to open any of the nuts and bolts of this machine it will stop working.

Given the increase in cash and other seizures what more needs to be done so that they come down?

We will continue to apply our existing stringent enforcement mechanisms which involve the Income Tax authorities, Excise, Narcotics and Central Forces among others. The seizures in the five States amount to ₹350 crore, which has been on account of our strict enforcement. Our aim is to restrain the movement of these inducements.

In cases of individual inducements like someone carrying money, existing laws are applied and FIRs registered. The problem is that bribing is a non-cognisable offence. We see a person indulging in it but cannot arrest him. So we feel handicapped as there is no immediate deterrent.

We have moved to make bribing a cognisable offence. Which means we file an FIR when we catch someone distributing cash or giving gifts or liquor and the person is arrested. I have taken this up with the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Minister. The Bill is ready, it has been circulated.

The Commission seems to be a bit hesitant to seek more powers to implement the Model Code of Conduct (MCC)...

The MCC was evolved by political parties and they have handed it to us for implementation. We are implementing it. The first responsibility lies with political parties and leaders.

But they violate it themselves?

Over the years, the Commission has felt that the MCC in its present form — which is non-statutory — serves the purpose of moral deterrence in the sense that the leaders and political parties do not indulge in large scale violations. There could be cases here and there but by and large they also try and adhere to it. They do not want to face any notices or censure or reprimand from the Commission.

Our view is that giving MCC a statutory form will not achieve a change in the conduct and behaviour of political parties and leaders because you will lodge an FIR and you will have to take it to investigation and to court. This will take four-five years and we do not know what the result will be.

Social media is now being used by political parties. Do you feel it is time to control that space?

We have looked at the use of social media from two angles. First is its probable use for violating MCC, like using it for provocative, inflammatory speeches during the election process. The second is the expenditure part. Social media is an electronic form, which is legal. We have no third angle. It is very difficult to regulate the limitless social media. What we have internally thought is that probably we will work on a complaint based system because we do not have the wherewithal to look at the bottomless social media system.

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