How reliable is the current voting system?
If EVM-VVPATs are stand-alone machines not connected to any external device, as repeatedly claimed by the Election Commission of India, how does the Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machine print the name and symbol of the chosen candidate? When and how are the names and symbols of the candidates uploaded on to the VVPAT?
Does this affect the technical, physical and procedural security claims of our electronic voting process?
In this talk, Kannan Gopinathan will discuss the ‘jugaad’-like manner in which the Indian VVPAT-machine has been designed and integrated into India’s electronic voting process and how that has endangered the process safeguards.
KANNAN GOPINATHAN
Kannan Gopinathan is an Indian Administrative Service Officer and an activist. He resigned from service as a mark of protest against the restrictions imposed in Jammu and Kashmir following the abrogation of article 370.
Gopinathan has had a stellar career in civil services.
His initiatives in Mizoram included efforts to improve state run schools, and the drive to revive Chite Lui. As District Magistrate of Aizawl, a highly disaster prone district, the comprehensive disaster management framework with Aizawl DDMA app and associated administrative ecosystem he developed won a citation in Government of India’s 21st national conference on e-Governance. Project Himna – MADAT, an early intervention and awareness program against drugs usage among upper primary and high-school going students started in Aizawl District during Gopinathan’s tenure was later adopted and scaled up across Mizoram considering the high incidence of substance abuse in the state. The Northeast Today named him as one of the five bureaucrats who made a difference in the North East in 2017.
During the 2018 Kerala floods, news of his volunteering efforts in various camps without revealing his identity as an IAS officer surfaced and was widely reported. Then 32-year-old, the IAS officer, Kannan Gopinathan worked at relief camps in flood-hit Kerala for eight days until he was recognised by a senior.
Kannan Gopinathan, as a secretary of key departments in Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, was instrumental in transforming a loss-making government electricity distribution firm into a profit-making one and completion of two decade delayed ring road project in Silvassa.
On the abrogation of Article 370, Gopinathan resigned in protest from service and has been a hugely impactful activist promoting public causes.
