More than 1,000 political parties have been delisted by the Election Commission of India over the last two years.
According to Om Prakash Rawat, Chief Election Commissioner, the political parties have been delisted for being inactive for a prolonged period; not taking part in the election process; or because of mismatch of address.
“The Supreme Court has held that we cannot de-register political parties. But found that we can delist parties and, over the last two years, more than 1,000 political parties have been delisted,” Rawat told reporters during an interactive session organised by the Merchants Chamber of Commerce.
“We sent notices to these political parties and once these notices returned, or we found that there was an address mismatch, or that a political party has remained inactive and not taken part in an election, we take steps to delist them,” he added.
EVM malfunction
On the issue of EVMs malfunctioning, Rawat maintained that a part of the responsibility also lies with poll officials.
Many poll officials do not take proper training or participate in mock polls because of which such problems arise on the day of polling.
Categorically denying that EVMs could be tampered with, Rawat said a film has been made by the commission on EVMs and how it still remains tamper-proof.
According to him, the machines have become “silent victims” of candidates’ failure to win elections.
Fake news
The Election Commission, said Rawat, was aware of the problem of fake news and manipulation of electorate opinion.
Accordingly, the Election Commission has set up a social-media team to monitor and prevent data breach of electorates and also to take corrective action. In fact, the EC may mull a model code of conduct for social media. He, however, did not elaborate.
The recent data breach by Cambridge Analytica – where private data of Facebook users was allegedly used to manipulate voting pattern – saw details of 5,00,000 users in India being compromised.
“The number of users whose data were breached are small compared to the total electorates here. But the Election Commission is aware of the threat that this sort of breaches pose to the election process,” he said.
According to Rawat, the Election Commission will also introduce a multi-lingual mobile application that allows electorates to share evidence of malpractice by political parties, candidates and activists directly with the electoral body. The app will be in use during the upcoming 2019 general elections.
Since the application allows sharing of photos and short audio and video clips, geo-location of the incident will get recorded and officers concerned will receive alerts.