Siddaramaiah, DKS defend move to return to ballot paper; say other countries have done it too

A day after the Karnataka Cabinet approved the reintroduction of the ballot papers in the upcoming local body elections, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, on Friday, defended his government’s decision to push for the use of ballot papers, saying that there were instances of other countries switching back to the paper-ballot system from electronic voting machines (EVMs).

Speaking to reporters, Mr. Siddaramaiah said, “We have decided in favour of the use of ballot papers based on our past experience.”

Law gives the option: DKS

Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar too defended the Cabinet decision, saying, “The law very much gave the use of ballot papers as an option... Why is the BJP worried? It’s provided in the law.”

The Cabinet decided to recommend to the State Election Commission (SEC) that the local body polls be conducted with ballot papers, discarding the EVM system.

The government’s decision, Mr. Shivakumar said, followed a detailed analysis of the conduct of the last Lok Sabha polls, suggesting that they were riddled with malpractice. “The law, as amended by the earlier BJP regime, mentions ‘either EVMs or paper ballots’,” he said.

BJP’s criticism

Meanwhile, BJP leaders, including Union Consumer Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi and the party’s State president, B.Y. Vijayendra, have criticised the move of the Congress government. “This is the most regressive decision taken by a backward-looking and outdated government headed by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. The government is taking the State back to the Stone Age,” former Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister and Rajajinagar MLA S. Suresh Kumar told the reporters here.

Mr. Suresh Kumar further said that by deciding to do away with the EVMs, the Congress has planned to do “Vote theft” and also insulted the “mature, conscientious and tech-savvy voters of Bengaluru city”.

The Congress government’s decision comes in the backdrop of the party’s leader, Rahul Gandhi, launching the nationwide “vote theft” campaign from here on August 8, seeking to justify his charge that the elections had been rigged in the Mahadevapura Assembly segment of the Bangalore Central Lok Sabha constituency in 2024.

Bengaluru was among the first cities to utilise EVMs in the late 1980s and 1990s. City-headquartered Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) engineers played a pioneering role in developing the EVMs to ensure smooth and peaceful elections across India. BEL has also exported EVMs to various countries.

Referring to this, Mr. Kumar said, “Our proud BEL and the Election Commission had asked the Congress leaders to prove that EVMs can be manipulated. But the Congress leaders had no moral courage to face the test. Neither did they have the courage to file an affidavit with the Election Commission.”