Was this Mumbai poll rigged like Chandigarh mayor election?

The dust has settled three weeks after Lok Sabha results and new members of Parliament (MPs) are attending the first House session, but Mumbai’s North West constituency has some unfinished business.On June 4, India witnessed the closest match of the season on this seat which covers, among other places, Juhu, Andheri and Versova where Bollywood and TV stars live. Here, Ravindra Dattaram Waikar of Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena defeated Amol Gajanan Kirtikar of Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena (UBT) by just 48 votes. A victory margin of 0.01%. It was the ultimate photo finish, but Kirtikar’s camp rejected the result. They say the Election Commission of India (EC) connived with Waikar to snatch victory from his hands. Here’s a look at the case and where it is headed now. medium nocaption111251254A cliffhanger countMumbai North West voted with the rest of the city on May 20. Twenty-one candidates were in the fray and 9,54,939 votes were cast. Waikar and Kirtikar together cornered almost 95% of the votes while third-placed Parmeshwar Ashok Ranshur got only 10,052 or 1% – less than the 15,161 votes for NOTA (none of the above).Votes cast through EVMs in the constituency were counted over 26 rounds, and Kirtikar finished first with a margin of – hold your breath – one vote. He had 4,51,095 votes to Waikar’s 4,51,094. But the postal votes – a facility available to elderly voters and government servants posted in far-off places – changed the outcome. As Waikar had 1,550 postal votes – 49 more than Kirtikar’s 1,501 – he was declared winner by 48 votes. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r Kirtikar cries foulNormally, candidates’ positions are announced at counting centres after each round. Kirtikar’s team pointed out that he was leading by a significant margin at the end of the 19th round when the announcements were halted for the final two hours. But that is a quibble compared with their other allegations of irregularities on counting day. Kirtikar’s team claims Waikar’s brother-in-law Mangesh Pandilkar tampered with EC’s ‘Encore’ application that’s used by the returning officer (RO) – the person overseeing the electoral process in a constituency – to enter voter turnout, digitise the votes polled, tabulate round-wise data and release the various statutory reports of counting. It’s a very serious allegation, but how could Pandilkar have hacked into a government application?An inside handWhile counting was on in Mumbai North West, two independent candidates, Surinder Mohan Arora and Bharat Khimji Shah (they together polled 2,612 votes), complained that Pandilkar had violated EC rules by using a phone inside the counting centre. They also alleged he had received an OTP on the phone. However, Mumbai North West RO Vandana Suryavanshi did not act on their complaints immediately. The EC later confirmed that the phone belonged to its data entry operator Dinesh Gurav, who had handed it over to Pandilkar. This was a significant lapse, says journalist Raju Parulekar who has flagged concerns about EVMs and Encore in the past. “The EC’s computer assistants have the authority to enter and re-enter data by obtaining OTPs on their authorised mobile numbers,” he points out. An FIR was filed against Gurav and Pandilkar only after 10 days, on June 14. Kirtikar’s team says action was delayed to delete call records and erase fingerprints. His party has also alleged that the phone used by Pandilkar was changed.RO’s defenceOn June 16, two days after the FIR was filed and hours after Elon Musk tweeted: “We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high,” returning officer Suryavanshi held a press conference to clarify that an EVM cannot be “unlocked” with an OTP. We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high. https://t.co/PHzJsoXpLh

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 15, 2024 “Voting machines do not require an OTP to function. It is a technically foolproof, standalone device. There is no provision for wireless or wired communication with it,” she said.But she admitted that “Gurav’s phone could receive an OTP to access… the Encore application, which is used by officers to digitise the votes polled, tabulate data, and take immediate action.”For Kirtikar, this was a red flag. He wondered how EC officials could access Encore to add counting data when the phone was outside the counting centre. And if the phone was used to generate another OTP while outside, couldn’t the final count have been modified? “Since it has been alleged that computer assistant Dinesh Gurav handed over his device to a candidate’s relative, the entire data entry work done by him throughout the counting day is suspect and should be reverified,” says journalist Parulekar.‘Show CCTV video’Recalling how CCTV footage had exposed the presiding officer’s shenanigans during the Chandigarh mayor’s election in January this year, Kirtikar demanded CCTV footage of the Mumbai North West counting centre, to no avail. “After the result was declared, Suryavanshi’s office promised the party (Sena UBT) that CCTV footage would be provided in two days, but it later said this can’t be done without a court order,” Kirtikar’s party colleague Anil Parab says.RO under cloudMeanwhile, questions have been raised about the RO’s conduct. Parab says many Shiv Sena (UBT) representatives were not given Form 17C that contains important data about voters and the EVMs used in an area. “The process of finalising the tally of each assembly segment was not transparent. Suryavanshi has no clear record of service, she faces charges of corruption, and was taking instructions from someone on her mobile phone,” he says.Others say her role as RO ended with the counting, so she shouldn’t be holding press conferences and issuing press notes in that capacity now. Political scientist Suhas Palshikar wrote on X: “Why is an ex-RO giving press conferences and that too when she is implicated!”“The role of the RO who confirmed Gurav’s data entry of the votes in Encore should also be verified as this RO has a controversial past record,” Parulekar says. How about a recount?Parab says, based on his polling agents’ inputs on June 4, Kirtikar got 650 more votes than Waikar. The only way to verify this would be to count the votes again. In fact, news bulletins on June 4 said a recount had been done. However, only the rejected postal ballots were verified then.“When the winning margin is very small, the rejected postal ballots are scrutinised. This is standard EC procedure,” a former EC officer explains. But is there a provision for recounting too? Yes, says the official. The dissatisfied candidate must submit a written application for it.Kirtikar told TOI+ he did write an application to the RO, but it was rejected. “While we were writing an application for recounting, the RO announced the result and rejected our demand. I am ready to accept my defeat, but the voters deserve to know what happened at the counting centre.”Over to the courtKirtikar’s last hope lies with the courts. The law allows him to file an ‘election petition’ in the high court within 45 days of the declaration of the result, and the Representation of the People Act 1951 recommends wrapping up such trials within six months, although they sometimes go on for years.While Kirtikar has not filed his petition so far, Bharat Khimji Shah, one of the two candidates who reported seeing Pandilkar with a phone in the counting centre on June 4, has appealed to Mumbai HC to declare the Mumbai North West result null and void. It’s hard to say whether the ongoing inquiries by police, the EC and the HC will overturn the result, but they will draw attention to some key questions regarding India’s electoral practices.Untitled Carousel 111069006boxcontentAre EVMs tamper-proof?The Election Commission and some experts insist India’s EVMs are tamper-proof, but M G Devasahayam, IAS (retd) who worked on a report about EVM and VVPAT (voter verifiable paper audit trail) systems, told TOI Plus that their implementation may not inspire confidence. “There is a lack of transparency on whether the vote I cast gets registered and counted as is,” he said, adding that the implementation of the VVPAT system does not rule out manipulation. Madhav Deshpande, former CEO of Tulip Software and one-time consultant to the Obama administration, has also said while Indian EVMs can’t be hacked, they can be manipulated. “EVMs are operated on power packs or batteries, and any device run on a battery can be manipulated, even if it is a standalone machine,” he says. What can be done to ensure they are not manipulated? Deshpande recommends connecting the ballot unit, control unit and VVPAT in such a way that the ballot unit is in the middle, “so it will give signals to VVPAT to print a slip, and to the CU to record the vote.”