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AADHAR NUMBER BASED VOTING MUST BE PROMOTED

YB WEB DESK. Dated: 4/8/2021 12:02:42 PM

T K NANDANAN Undeterred by the alarming situation of Covid-19 pandemic, the voters in Kerala, Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Assam came out in large numbers to exercise their franchise in the Assembly elections held on Tuesday. In Kerala, Communist-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) is hoping to beat anti-incumbency to retain power while the Congress- led United Democratic Front (UDF) is over the moon for the fact that huge turnout always favored them to come to power. At the same time, the LDF is seeking to break the state’s four-decadeold trend of swinging between the Communists and the Congress. And for the BJP, Kerala still seems to be an unconquerable mountain though it has fought well. However, the BJP fielded a new yet famous face, Mr. E. Sreedharan, widely known as ‘Metroman’ this time, who can be a game changer. Regarding the election in Tamil Nadu, both the Dravidian parties AIADMK and DMK went into the election this time without their charismatic leaders like J Jayalalitha and M Karunanidhi. As usual, Bengal reported sporadic violence and some candidates were attacked during the third phase of West Bengal Assembly elections on Tuesday. Elections in other states were by and large peaceful. As everyone knows, India has been using Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) for long though many political leaders are still apprehensive of its fool-proofness. Prominent countries are still not using it, instead they all use paper ballots. Japan, the USA, England, the Netherlands, France, Germany etc., have all kept it away from using since serious doubts about safety, accuracy, reliability and verification of elections through electronic machines are raised. However, it is true that elections conducted with the help of ballot papers are very expensive, slow and not environment-friendly. In this context, the government can consider a voting system in which people can be asked to cast their vote by using their finger-print. By this method, a voter as usual is allowed to enter the polling booth wherein the presiding officer can activate the voting machine after entering the Aadhar number of the voter concerned and now this voter can enter the cubicle to cast his vote. As the machine is ready now with the particular voter’s details, the voter can select their candidate and in order to endorse the candidate, the voter has to use his finger-print on the particular space provided. With this system, no one can impersonate and cast fake votes. Since Aadhar is unique, a voter is also unique and therefore one cannot perform electoral fraud or ballot stuffing. This kind of voting system is fool-proof and it will be acceptable to all those who want just and fair elections.