On April 19, when senior Congress leader and former minister Sunil Kedar learned that a faulty EVM unit was found in a polling booth in Ramtek Lok Sabha constituency, the first person he called was advocate Pavan Dahat.
Dahat, who had headed the legal team for Congress’ election war room in Karnataka and Rajasthan, assured the former minister that the particular unit was already in the list prepared by his team which were being tracked for the elections. Congress went on to win this seat.
Despite its first choice of candidate, Rashmi Barve being unable to fight due to her caste validity certificate being declared invalid — Dahat and his team talked about how this was perhaps the reason for the victory as for the first time in a long time that Congress was tracking EVMs used during the election process.
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Dahat, who holds a master’s in political science and constitutional law, said that EVM Management has become the new edge which can make or break elections.
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“Right from the manufacturing site to the polling station, the district authorities keep meticulous track of EVMs. Tracking a machine means basically tracking its unique number and checking the seals. What we had to do is to ensure that the records which were given to us and to the agents of the political parties, matched with the physical units of the machines,” he said.
While this sounds easy, in reality, such minute tracking was something that senior MVA leaders admitted was not done previously. Lack of knowledge of the process as well lack of manpower in some areas have made this endeavor impossible to be followed in spirit and soul. Dahat, who had earlier worked as a journalist with The Hindu and The Huffington Post said that most of the opposition parties have neglected this very crucial point.
Sunil Kedar, while speaking to The Indian Express said that the process of EVM tracking and training had dual benefits. “Of course it helped us to see that proper machines were used– but at the booth level, it revitalized and recharged the booth worker,” he said. Dahat’s team tracked EVMs at every stage and ensured no unique machine was used.
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Special EVM kits were given to polling agents in Ramtek a week before the polling which helped the booth level workers ensure the sanctity of the process. The kits had the numbers of the machines as well as the instructions on what the agents have to do on the day of election.
“We were not limited to the identification number of EVM units only. We had also provided security seal numbers of control units to these polling agents and they just had to match the details after reaching the polling station on the day of the poll. We also had security seal details of ballot units as well,” Dahat said.
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Dahat and his team did similar work in Amravati, Shirur, Kolhapur and Pune Lok Sabha seats as well. Dahat conducted training for Dhairyasheel Mohite Patil for the Madha Lok Sabha seat.
Dahat said they were able to find unaccounted EVMs for every seat he worked at. “There were around 79 EVMs which could not be tracked in Ramtek Lok Sabha. The election authorities later on told us that these EVMs were in the supplementary randomisation list. We found that security seal details of 47 EVMs were missing in Amaravati Lok Sabha and Amravati district administration was gracious enough to admit on record that it was a mistake on their part. Security seal details of 248 EVMs were missing for Kolhapur Lok Sabha which were made available when the Congress candidate Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj wrote a letter to the district collector. The security details of 1461 EVMs were missing for Shirur and Pune district but we managed to get it in time when Sunil Kedar personally came to DEO office with me,” Dahat said.
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Dahat also provided EVM kits to counting agents at these Lok Sabha seats which carried unit numbers and security details of every EVM used in that particular constituency and of the units which were replaced. He also found discrepancies at 53 polling station’s Form 17 C of Pune Lok Sabha.
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Barring Pune, all the other constituencies where Dahat worked viz Amaravati (Balwant Wankhede- Congress), Kolhapur (Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj- Congress), Shirur (Dr Amol Kolhe NCP – (SP)), Ramtek (Shyamsundar Barve- Congress), Chandrapur ( Prathibha Dhanorkar) were won by MVA candidates.
Kedar said the party hopes to continue this activity for the upcoming election as well. “This exercise helps in revitalizing the whole party cadre– and in an age and time of high tech elections, we also need to keep up with the trends,” Kedar said.
