The Election Commission has called an all-party meeting on Monday to showcase the remote electronic voting machine (RVM) prototype for migrant voters. The poll panel has invited eight recognised national parties and 57 recognised state parties for the demonstration.
The parties have been invited for a "discussion on improving voter participation of domestic migrants using remote voting”, the Commission said in its letter. Members of the EC's Technical Expert Committee will also be present at the meeting.
The parties have been asked to give in writing their views by end of January on issues such as changes required on the law to allow use of RVM.
The multi-constituency remote EVM, developed by public sector undertaking Electronics Corporation of India Ltd (ECIL), can handle up to 72 constituencies from a single remote polling booth. ECIL and Bharat Electronics Ltd are the two PSUs manufacturing the EVMs.
The RVM is a modified version of the time-tested model of M3 (Mark 3) EVMs to enable voting at remote polling stations —polling stations outside home constituency, for domestic migrants.
If implemented after stakeholder consultations, migrant voters do not need to travel to their home districts to exercise their franchise.
Opposition to oppose proposal
Meanwhile, most of the opposition parties who met in Delhi on Sunday have decided to oppose the poll panel's proposal as it is “sketchy and not concrete”, Congress leader Digvijay Singh said.
Talking to reporters after the meeting, Singh said there are huge political anomalies in the proposal for remote voting machine with things like the definition of migrant labourers not clear.
"The overall view of all political parties that attended today was to unanimously oppose the proposal of RVM because it is still very sketchy. The proposal is not concrete. There are political anomalies and problems in the proposal," he said.
Besides Congress, leaders of the JD(U), Shiv Sena, RJD, CPI, CPI(M), National Conference, JMM, RSP, IUML and VCK attended the meeting while the Trinamool Congress, Samajwadi Party and the Nationalist Congress Party gave it a miss.
Singh said they will raise the issue of exact number of migrant labourers and the supplier of the chip in the RVM machine with the Election Commission at Monday's meeting.
"The proposal given by the EC is most impractical, They have given a figure of 30 crore of migrant labour when survey has not been done," he said.
Singh further said that the opposition leaders will meet again on January 25 and send their reply either jointly or separately but with a clear view that they "don't support RVM".