Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader and West Bengal minister Shashi Panja alleged that security failures occurred at an EVM strong-room in Kolkata [1].
These allegations suggest a vulnerability in the electoral process, as the integrity of electronic voting machines is central to the legitimacy of assembly election results.
Panja said that a truck carrying postal ballot papers was taken into the secured strong-room on May 4, 2024 [1]. This occurred just before the counting of votes in the West Bengal assembly elections [1]. According to Panja, the truck was moved into the facility when no political party representatives were present to oversee the process [1, 2].
The minister said that the room where the ballots were placed lacked CCTV coverage [1]. She said that people were seen inside the sealed strong-room without prior intimation to political parties [2]. Panja said the situation was a serious lapse in security [1].
Panja said, "When no representative of any political party was present, a truck full of postal ballots was brought into the strong room and kept in that room where CCTV was not installed" [1]. She said that the lack of oversight and monitoring created a scenario where tampering with electronic voting machines could potentially occur [1, 2].
This breach of protocol involves the storage of both physical postal ballots and electronic machines in the same secured area [1, 2]. The TMC leader said that such lapses could affect the final outcome of the election [1, 2].
“There was a serious lapse in EVM strong‑room security.”
The allegations highlight a critical tension in Indian elections regarding the 'chain of custody' for voting materials. When party representatives are excluded from secured areas and surveillance is absent, it creates a transparency gap that opposition parties often cite to challenge the validity of the vote count, regardless of whether actual tampering occurred.
