UP election missing right verdict: Need online voting

Social engineering, better law an order and anti-incumbency factor are the reason contemplated for BSP win in this Uttar Pradesh assembly election.

I have noticed another reason for this assembly election result. An online voting system would have showed different result.

The mandate that has come up had been ignored by majority. There had been an average of 45 per cent voting across the state. This shows that 55 percent have ignored these election and they had been unable to cast their vote were, for one or the other reason.

There are two reason that I have observed for this low turnout of voters.

In the past years, many voters have migrated from their native place for the reason of meeting their basic needs. Youth have either left their hometown or state for the purpose of education and job. Parents who can afford their children education in other state don’t go for the second thought to let their child study midst goons and power cuts.

My IITian friend,Arun Chaubey belongs to a small village ,Sirsia of Siddhartnagar in east Uttar Pradesh but has never stayed there. His parents still stay there. There is no trace of electricity in his village. He did his primary education from neighbouring Basti district and then went to Rishikesh for his secondary education. After that he was in IIT, Kanpur and now he is in Gurgaon.

This assembly election he did not vote for basic reason that his company has no provision to grant leave to an employee who has to go for vote. If it did, there is no provision that voter will not be charged travel fare as he is going to vote.

But I took his view and his view differed from the scene that is in Uttar Pradesh. As the vote should be kept secret , I will only say that he did not wanted to vote for any of the candidate but still if he had to choose from the contesting parties he would have not voted for BSP . There may be many of this ilk who could not cast their vote and many are those who prefer to go for ‘none of these option’.

The mandate in Uttar Pradesh election does not include vote of many intellectuals and literate like Arun. Election Commission has not made any effort to gather the vote of immigrants.

Now lets take a look of those who were present in the town but did not go to vote. I will take my town Basti as a sample for this.

The elections were held in the summer when the mercury touched 40 degree celcius. There was no provision made by EC for shade,water or health allowance in case the voters fell sick. Thus from the past experience voters decided to stay at home for the two main reasons. One they did not wanted to trudge for the candidates who did not had any unique selling point like good educational qualification or renowned social worker. The other thing is that they showed no interest to vote for prominent congress leader Jagdambika Pal who has done cinch for the district and had been loser since Lok Sabha election of 2004.

The new face Jitendra Kumar of BSP emerged as winner for simple reason of cast politics, anti-incumbency factor against three times sitting MLA Jagdambika Pal and goonda raj that proliferated under SP government.

Thus in the case of Basti which saw around 20 per cent voting(I heard this figure, EC has not mentioned this figure till date), majority had ignored this election.

Had there been an online voting system, the election result would have been different. It would have included mandate of majority. I discussed it with my friend and all of them agreed. Those who did not considered it right solution, conceded to it after a brief discussion. The only doubt that had come up was related to security.

One of my friend asked “What is the solution in case the voters are threatened in their house and there is situation that goons have kept gun on their head and asking them to vote for their sponsors? The voter will log in to his account and do as the goon is asking them to do.”

We gave a thought to it and within minutes came up with solution similar to that in ATMs of US. For this the security can be in the password. Suppose his password is of 10 letters, he will just type eight of them and leave two. By this way he will be able to log in but his vote will not count. This in turn can raise alarm in cabins of election staff and security personnel. The tracing in this kind of situation will be easy for security personnel that to wander hither and thither in the constituency.

My point here is that if few of my friend can discussed for around 30 minutes and came up with provisional safe and convenient strategy for online voting .What is election commission doing from past 10-15 years to increase or check number of voters turnout?

If election commission gives a thought to it then it can collect mandate of 40 million literate Indians who use internet and have grown at the rate of 700 per cent since year 2000.

Hence, Uttar Pradesh assembly elections 2007 were free from violence but not fair as it missed vote of majority.