NEW DELHI: An anti-EVM group headed by Congress leader Udit Raj on Tuesday claimed the present electronic voting machine system was not end-to-end verifiable, making it “unfit” for democratic elections, and demanded a return to the ballot paper method.

Raj, a spokesperson and national convenor of ‘EVM Hatao Morcha’, said the Congress and the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) have been trying to meet the Election Commission but were unsuccessful.

A protest will be launched on February 22 against using EVMs for voting, he said.

The ‘EVM Hatao Morcha’ is a common platform of NGOs, the INDIA bloc parties, social organisations, intellectuals and citizens of the country.

“Public trust in EVMs has never been lower than it is today. This is because EVMs are ‘black boxes’ and voting through these machines does not comply with the essential democratic principles which stipulate that each voter has the knowledge and capacity to verify that his or her vote is cast-as-intended, recorded-as-cast and counted-as-recorded,” Raj said. The design and implementation of EVMs as well as the results of both software and hardware verifications are not public and open to independent review, he claimed.