Civil Society, Politicians Vow To Combat 3Ms: Machine, Money And Media Power

Over 200 people attending a conference on Machine, Money and Media Power, on August 13, agreed that the 3Ms pose "the gravest challenges to democracy in India today," said the press release issued by conductors of the conference. The attendees of the conference included civil society representatives and political parties, and it was conducted by the Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG), Jan Sarokar and People First.

Several speakers elaborated on the "3M challenges", and the need for civil society and political parties to come together in order to combat the same effectively. They spoke on issues of unreliability of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), and the misuse of electoral bonds which have introduced big money into the electoral process. Senior journalist Pamela Philipose also brought up the need to regulate fake news, propaganda, and social media manipulation with regard to politics, during the first session.

Eleven parties also endorsed resolutions to combat Machine, Money & Media Power, which they say are "distorting electoral democracy in India". The joint civil society and political parties conference was attended by over 200 people. Representatives of political parties including INC, CPIM, SP, BSP, CPI, NCP, TRS, RJD, RLD, Welfare Party & Swaraj India resolved to "fight against machine, money and media power which pose the gravest challenges to democracy in India today."

In the first session, the chair Deb Mukherji, spoke of the current scenario and the "need for civil society and political parties to come together during these unprecedented times". MG Devasahayam spoke on the effort of the Citizens Commission on Elections which reviewed the 3M challenges to democracy, as analysed by experts in India and across the world and published them as a book titled- 'Electoral Democracy? An Inquiry into the fairness and integrity of Elections in India'.

Professor of Computer Science, IIT, Delhi, Dr. Subhashis Banerji, explained how EVMs can be manipulated and said there is an urgent need to ensure verifiability and auditability of the voting process. Co-convenor of the National Campaign for Peoples' Right to Information, Anjali Bhardwaj, spoke of how the electoral bonds had opened the floodgates to unlimited anonymous big money with no information being provided to people on who is funding the parties. senior journalist Pamela Philipose, spoke of the urgent need to regulate fake news, propaganda and social media manipulation which was weaponised by BJP in elections.

In the second session, leaders of 11 political parties spoke on the challenges posed by 3Ms. The resolutions passed at the Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG), Jan Sarokar and People First Joint Civil Society--Political Parties Conference held at New Delhi on August 13 are:

EVM voting and VVPAT counting

It is recognised that purely EVM-based voting and counting does not comply with 'Democracy Principles' which require that each voter should be able to verify that his or her vote is cast-as-intended; recorded-as-cast and counted-as-recorded. We demand the following:

i. EVMs cannot be assumed to be tamper-proof. The voting process should be redesigned to be software and hardware independent in order to be verifiable or auditable.

ii. The VVPAT system should be re-designed to be fully voter-verified. A voter should be able to get the VVPAT slip and cast it in a chip-free ballot box for the vote to be valid and counted. This should not require interaction with any authorities and should not depend in any way on assumptions of correctness of machines.

iii. The integrity of the VVPAT slips and the EVM machines during the entire time after polling and before counting and auditing must be ensured in a manner that is verifiable. The VVPAT slips must be printed in such form and manner to be preserved for a minimum of 5 years.

iv. There must be stringent audit of the electronic tally for every constituency before the results are declared. The audit should be based on full manual counting of the VVPAT slips to improve voter confidence. Forms 17A and Forms 17C must be tallied and be publicly disclosed at the end of polling on the day itself. Forms 17A and 17C should also be tallied with the manual count of VVPAT printouts.

v. There is need to move away from certification of voting equipment and processes and demonstrate that the outcome of an election is correct irrespective of machines and trust on custody chains of EVMs and VVPATs. This can be done by adopting well established strategies for risk-limiting audits (RLA) or by using a provably end-to-end verifiable cryptographic protocol, or both. The ECI should explore the possibilities.

vi. The EVM voting and counting system design should be subjected to independent (of the government and ECI) review and the integrity of the election process should be subjected to independent audit. The findings should be made public and all design details should be transparent and publicly available.

Money Power

Massive money power and the criminal muscle-power created thereof is destroying the very integrity of India's elections. Candidates expenses have a ceiling but political party spending does not have any ceiling.The Fast-rising economic oligarchy in the country, threatening India as a welfare state is the direct fallout of this extreme criminal and money power in elections which is the fountainhead of all corruption in the country.

It compromises the integrity of democracy in multiple ways: it raises the entry barriers to politics; excludes honest candidates and parties; leads to corruption and big money controlling the state; distortion of policy making in wasteful, inefficient, and anti-democratic directions; and exacerbation of polarisation.

The government, using the Money Bill route to bypass Rajya Sabha, introduced electoral bonds that has increased opaqueness and consolidated the role of big money in electoral politics. The Electoral Bonds Scheme in its current form must be immediately discontinued. There must be transparency in political party funding. Details of donations, including amounts and names of donors, should be in the public domain.

Media Power

The free media plays a crucial role before, during and after elections in creating an environment for the dissemination of information that enhances people's ability to vote in an informed way. India's mediascape has undergone a major transformation with the exponential growth in the use of the internet across the world and also in India.

Unfortunately, communication technologies and media platforms are creating polarisation through the circulation of disinformation and hate- filled text posts and tweets. Despite guidelines and codes, ECI has not seem to be taking cognizance of the many violations in the past elections. ECI failed to curb fake news online before and during these elections. Procrastination, silence, and inaction characterised ECI's responses even to serious violations of Model Code of Conduct and media code. We urge the ECI to take strong and effective actions against the offenders whosoever they may be.

The resolutions were unanimously passed and supported by senior political leaders such as

Digvijay Singh of the INC. Singh said he "did not trust EVMs as people couldn't be sure where their vote went. Due to electoral bonds, people did not know where money was going and by unchecked use of money, Bharatiya Janata Party was controlling the media and in fact even funding the spread of fake news." He added that "in many states the BJP was using money power and various agencies including ED, CBI, IT to break legislators and make governments fall and install their own."

According to Sitaram Yechury of CPIM "electoral bonds were smuggled in through the Money Bill route". He had challenged it in court, but said that ""the Supreme Court had not decided the matter even though more than three years had passed. Yechury said the time has come for all political parties to come together and "start a Jan Andolan to save democracy." He added that the Election Commision was functioning like "it's become like the Executive Council rather than an independent Constitutional body" and that "the media was acting as a propaganda channel for the government, suppressing the voice of the Opposition."

D Raja of the CPI said "the fact that 90% of the bonds were transacted in the highest denomination of Rs. 1 crore showed that this was not being given by ordinary persons showed the control of the electoral funding was completely under corporate control." According to D Raja he had also approached the Supreme Court seeking full VVPAT count of EVMs.

According to RLD's Dr. Mairajuddin Ahmed "role of big money and criminalisation has completely skewed the electoral field". Jitendra Awad of NCP added that "everyone knows knows EVMs can be manipulated - but where will you go for justice? The Supreme Court, the institutions are all compromised. Therefore we have to go to the court of the people."