Karimnagar: New voting process worries candidates

Karimnagar: With elaborate arrangements being made to conduct the elections on a smooth note and in a peaceful atmosphere in the two Parliament segments of Karimnagar and Peddapalli of erstwhile Karimangar district, some key elements are worrying political parties and candidates who are vying for the LS seats. The performances of governments and political parties both in the state and at the Centre, the newly introduced voting process through electronic voting machines and use of VVPATs (voter verifiable paper audit trail) along with the image of the candidate in the respective Parliament segments are worrying political parties.

People are not very positive to both state and central government’s performances and their assessment on corruption, price rise, and employment opportunities to youth is dampening. Some political parties are not keeping their poll promises and some are not able to satisfy its leaders who have shifted loyalties.

Farmers especially are not happy with both governments. Though both state and Central governments introduced welfare schemes for the farming sector, farmers are unhappy as they have provided MSP for the foodgrains they produce and not supplied water for irrigation.

Former general secretary of the Bar Association, Karimnagar, B. Raghunandan Rao spoke to this newspaper. He said, “These are the national elections, no doubt, but the higher popularity of state governments in the respective states is not going to make matters easy for the national parties compared to regional parties which are rooted from the village level in their respective areas.” Despite comprehensive and transparent measures put into operation for perfect functioning of EVMs by the EC, people in many parts of the erstwhile Karimnagar district allege that a secret programme is built into the software that will transfer all votes to a favourite party (ruling party). They demand that the EC return to the old method of voting, the ballot paper system.

In an awareness programme in the district headquarters, Joint Collector Shyam Prasad Lal cleared doubts about EVMs. He said that EVMs are standalone machines and are not networked either by wire or by wireless to any other machine or system. The fact is that the software, once fused into the EVM chip is unalterable. and the machine cannot be manipulated by sending messages from external sources. Apart from this, to strengthen transparency, VVPATs (voter verifiable paper audit trail) are also used, he added.

There are 14,69,056 voters under Peddapalli Parliament constituency of whom 7,36,004 are males, 7,32,972 are females and 80 are transgenders. Borlakunta Venkatesh Netha from the TRS, Dr. A Chandrashekar from the Congress and S Kumar from the BJP are contesting for the Peddapalli Parliament seat. There are 16,50,893 voters under Karimangar Parliament constituency of whom 8,15,230 are males, 8,35,629 are females and 34 are transgenders. Boinapalli Vinod Kumar from the TRS, Ponnam Prabhakar from the Congress and Bandi Sanjay Kumar from the BJP are vying for the Karimnagar Parliament seat.