Supreme Court asks the Centre what blocks totalisers for EVM counting

The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Union government to spell out the legal and practical barriers to using totalisers when votes stored in electronic voting machines are counted. A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana was hearing petitions that want results declared for a cluster of booths rather than for each polling station.

A totaliser links about 14 EVM control units by cable and prints one combined tally for each candidate. Booth-level numbers never appear. The point, as advocate Ashwini Upadhyay put it for the petitioners, is voter privacy after the count. Candidates who can see which hamlet voted against them have, in past elections, used that map for reward and punishment.

The Chief Justice told Attorney-General R. Venkataramani that the government should look at the amendments required in the Conduct of Elections Rules, including Rule 59A, and at the Law Commission's 255th report, which backed selective use of totalisers. "We would like to know what are the impediments, if any, and whether there would be any negative impact because of introduction of such a mechanism," the bench said. It also asked the Election Commission to send its proposal to the Centre.

The Commission's warning

Senior advocate Seshadhri Naidu, for the Election Commission, said the present moment is a poor time to add a new machine. EVMs themselves are under frequent public questioning. A totaliser with no statutory definition could create a fresh controversy. Neither the Representation of the People Act nor the 1961 Rules mention the device. Counting procedure would have to be rewritten.

Political parties have already voted with their letters. Three of six national parties and 18 of 29 state parties told the Commission they oppose totalisers. That is the majority the Commission put on the record. The Law Commission remains the main official body that has argued for them.

The petitions before the court also seek common electoral rolls for Lok Sabha, Assembly and local body polls. Tuesday's order isolated the totaliser question and sent it to the Union as a rules problem, not as a direction to install hardware before the next wave of elections.

What a totaliser would hide

Booth data is how parties build local machines. It is also how researchers and courts reconstruct whether a polling station was captured. Mixing 14 booths protects the voter in a hostile village. It also blurs the evidence trail if a single booth was stuffed. That trade-off is why parties that win on booth-level organisation dislike the machine, and why petitioners who fear post-poll harassment want it.

The Centre now has to answer on two planes. First, can Rule 59A be amended without a new Act. Second, would a totaliser reduce confidence in EVMs rather than raise it. The Commission has already given its view. The Union's affidavit will show whether the government wants the map of each booth to stay public.