A parliamentary panel on electoral reforms remained ambivalent with regards to incorporating use of electronic voting machines (EVM) systems in law, as election authorities on Monday failed to satisfy a committee on solutions to deal with possible manoeuvring in these machines.
An eight-member sub-committee of the parliamentary panel for electoral reforms received a demo of sample machines from three vendors — two government organisations and a private manufacturer.
During the in-camera meeting, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) briefed the committee about merits and demerits of the use of EVMs for polling. The sub-committee was told that there was no mechanism which was 100 per cent fool proof or that use of EVMs would mitigate chances of poll rigging.
They were told that in Germany and India, where these machines are used, their deployment was not without complaints.
The committee asked the ECP to come up with concrete proposals of all possible solutions since the project will cost the national exchequer billions of rupees. The committee was told that an EVM, with built-in biometric voter verification system, would cost between Rs 60,000 and Rs 70,000 each with the ECP requiring around 275,000 such machines.
The sub-committee, led by Science and Technology Minister Zahid Hamid and comprising members who were mostly senior politicians and officials with legal backgrounds — sought solutions to avoid such possible manoeuvrings. However, the technical teams of the ECP and EVM vendors failed to satisfy the committee who were asked to come up with concrete proposals with manoeuvre-proof technological solutions.
