T H E P O L I S P R O J E C T 3 D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 0 what happened in India's elections? Art by: Siddhesh Gautam S U C H I T R A V I J A Y A N I N C O N V E R S A T I O N W I T H POONAM AGARWAL / SRINIVAS KODALI / PRASANNA What Happened in India's Elections? Indians went to polls in the 2019 general elections, with nearly 900 million people casting their votes. For over seven decades, India has held the largest democratic exercise in the world. However, over the past few years, many scholars, researchers, activists, and journalists have raised a series of concerns and questions about the election process. Has the system been rigged? On 12 September 2020, The Polis Project hosted a roundtable on Indian Elections with journalist Poonam Agarwal, independent researcher Srinivas Kodali, and lawyer Prasanna hosted by Suchitra Vijayan. In the following discussion, they address a series of issues including: electoral bonds, the vulnerability of the EVM-VVPAT machines, and the broader failures of institutions, both the Court and the Election Commission. B y S u c h i t r a V i j a y a n This transcript has been edited for length and clarity. 0 1 Electoral Bonds - Poonam Agarwal Electoral bonds are a promissory note introduced by the government by the late Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley. He presented these bonds with the promise that they will protect the identity of the donor. If a political donor wants to donate to a particular political party, he does not need to donate in cash. They can purchase the bond and donate it to the political party, which can then cash it. Second, (in his 2017 Budget speech, then-Finance Minister Arun) Jaitley claimed that the donors are scared of making political donations because they fear that they might get arm-twisted or threatened if other political parties get to know. So, this was the promise made by the government when the bonds were introduced. Now was it essential? Is an electoral bond protecting the identity of the donors? I started working on this in 2018; the first tranche of the electoral bond was sold in March 2018. I went to the State Bank of India, the only bank that can sell electoral bonds, talked to the officials, and wanted to know more about electoral bonds. I was told that there is nothing on the electoral bond that would reveal the donor's identity, just the purchase date. 0 2 E L E C T O R A L B O N D S / / P O O N A M A G A R W A L We purchased an electoral bond and found that electoral bonds have hidden, unique, alpha-numeric numbers. Why do you need a hidden alpha-numeric number on the electoral bonds? You cannot see the number while purchasing it; you can see it only under ultraviolet rays. I got to know this after the bond was sent to the forensic lab for testing. Now when these bonds are sold, they can be tracked. When donated to the political party, they can track the donor through the alpha-numeric number. This was the secret policing that the government was doing: they never admitted this on record but instead claimed it was for security reasons. Apart from the unique alpha-numeric number, there are also watermarks on the bonds. The watermarks could tell you whether the electoral bond is genuine or fake. Technically there was no reason for the number; even the Indian currency does not have such unique numbers. We found no other promissory note, currency, or any other document that carries such a unique number. This was told to me by one of the former directors of the Reserve Bank of India. A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was filed, and later on, many Right to Information (RTI) request were filed. There were reports that the State Bank of India (SBI) was noting down these alpha-numeric numbers before bonds were sold to anybody. So, why did the government create electoral bonds, and more importantly, why are the names of donors who buy electoral bonds not revealed to the Election Commission of India? People have every right to know who these political donors are. But as per the with the Finance Bill (2017),(and the amendments made), the political party, in their audit report, need to mention the total amount they received through Electoral Bonds, but do not have to reveal the identity of the donor, which makes the entire political donation opaque and this is a big problem in any democracy. 0 3 Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) - Poonam Agarwal Coming to EVM and VVPATs: my journey with this particular story started after the Lok Sabha Elections in 2019. I would like to give credit to one of my sources who had been helpful for my stories. He was the first person to flag that the votes polled data and the votes counted data of elections did not match. It was not just in Lok Sabha elections, but the elections prior to that in Madhya Pradesh Elections and Maharashtra – the votes polled and votes counted data did not match. This is important for a simple reason: how can the Election Commission declare any result without getting the final numbers of vote counted and vote polled? The mismatch is a big question, to which the Election Commission never gave any clear answer. They just said that the process takes time, and they need to talk to several Returning Officers, send several data, compile them together, and only then the results are declared. 0 4 E V M A N D V V P A T / / P O O N A M A G A R W A L The Electronic Voting Machines EVM and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) malfunctioning is another aspect. The RTI revealed that private engineers from a company based in Maharashtra were engaged by the Electronics Corporation of India Ltd. (ECIL). Now the Election Commission has always claimed that authorized engineers are engaged by ECIL and Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL), which are the manufacturing companies of EVM-VVPAT. What do they mean by authorized engineers? Are they regular employees? Or are they contractual? They never clarified this, but they always maintained that authorized engineers have access to the EVM- VVPATs. These engineers have access to EVM-VVPATs at least six months before the elections because they need to do the first level checking. They are involved in counting, during the polling, and throughout the elections. If they are engaging contractual engineers who are hired for one or one and a half years, aren't they making the entire election process vulnerable as far as the security of these EVMs and VVPATs are concerned? These engineers have complete access to this, and once their contracts are over, they are out in the world. They can do anything because they have complete knowledge of these EVM-VVPATs. Also, these engineers are not given proper training about EVM-VVPATs before they are engaged in any particular election. So, these are significant issues, and the Election Commission has never given a clear answer. We have repeatedly been asking about it. 0 5 EVM and VVPAT manipulation - Poonam Agarwal The last thing that I would like to speak about is the EVM- VVPAT manipulation. There is a "ballot unit," and there is a VVPAT machine that shows the slip, which indicates whether your vote has gone to your candidate or not. The wiring of the EVM and VVPAT machine is such that once you press the button on the ballot, the vote first goes to the VVPAT, the slip comes out, and after that, it goes to the Control Unit where your vote is recorded. Now, the vote that is counted on the counting day is from the Control Unit. 0 6 E E V M A N D V V P A T M A N I P U L A T I O N / / P O O N A M A G A R W A L When VVPAT was introduced, the Control Unit would record the vote first, and not the VVPAT machine. This was clarified in the Court. But that is not how it works. There should have been either a parallel wire going, one from Ballot Unit to VVPAT machine, and another to the Control Unit, but this is not the case. The former IAS officer Kannan Gopinathan has written to the Election Commission. Till this day, he has not gotten any reply. It has been one year so far. These are important questions and concerns about which I have been reporting, and I will continue to report. I would like to mention that the Election Commission is supposed to save and store the VVPAT slips for one year, but they destroyed it within four months. And this is something we got to know through an RTI to which the Election Commission has not given us an answer yet. 0 7 Digital Colonization of Data - Srinivas Kodali In India, the election process is increasingly becoming digitized. when you buy the electoral bonds, you also submit your Aadhar, your digital ID. While the State collects a lot of information about you, they are increasingly making it non- transparent for the citizens. From the outside, you have no idea what's happening – whether it is hiding the private players or even what is the Election Commission of India's (ECI) role in regulating all this.