Former Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi on Tuesday, 14 July revealed that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was once the most vocal critic of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), and that it was Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief N. Chandrababu Naidu who proposed the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) — the very mechanism that eventually helped restore public confidence in India's electronic voting system.

BJP's Earlier Stance on EVMs

Quraishi recalled that when he assumed office as Chief Election Commissioner in 2010, doubts about EVMs were at their highest point. The BJP, he noted, had published a book titled 'Democracy at Risk', authored by G.V.L. Narasimha Rao with a foreword by senior leader L.K. Advani, which questioned the dependability and trustworthiness of the machines.

"The BJP was the biggest critic of EVMs, and they even wrote a book, 'Democracy at Risk'... they were questioning the dependability and trustworthiness of the EVMs," Quraishi said.

Chandrababu Naidu's Surprising Role

Shortly after taking charge, Quraishi convened a meeting with opposition party leaders to hear their concerns. The delegation was led by N. Chandrababu Naidu — a detail that surprised Quraishi, given Naidu's well-known reputation as a technology advocate.

"I was initially very surprised to see him leading a delegation which is anti-technology because he was a technology icon," Quraishi said. He added that he challenged Naidu directly: "At the end of the day, either you will convince me, or I'll convince you to become the brand ambassador of EVM."

Quraishi clarified that Naidu did not allege that EVMs had been tampered with or that election results had been manipulated. Naidu's concern, according to Quraishi, was the absence of visible transparency — that when a voter pressed a button, there was no way to verify with the naked eye that the vote had gone to the intended candidate.

How VVPAT Was Born

Naidu proposed a solution: attach a printer to the EVM that would display the chosen candidate's name on a screen momentarily, then automatically cut a paper slip that would drop into a sealed box. This slip count could then be cross-checked against the machine's digital tally.

Quraishi quoted Naidu as explaining: "Introduce VVPAT, which means there will be a printer attached, and on that printer there will be a screen on which, when you choose a candidate, it will appear on the screen... a chit or a slip will get cut automatically and go into a sealed box, and then you can compare the figures in the machine and the slips which it has generated."

The Election Commission of India (ECI) subsequently implemented VVPAT across polling stations. Quraishi said that during verification exercises, lakhs of paper slips were compared against machine counts — and all of them tallied. "With the help of VVPAT we were able to establish, re-establish the credibility of EVM," he said.

On the Current VVPAT Debate

Addressing the ongoing controversy over how many VVPAT slips should be counted, Quraishi urged dialogue over dismissal. He said that just as the original EVM concerns were resolved through conversation, the current questions around the extent of slip counting should also be settled through engagement with political parties.

"If some parties — and many parties in this case — are questioning it, we should listen to them. Surely, just as we listened to them and found a solution... if you talk to them and ask them to explain what it is that they want, surely a solution will be found," he said.

This comes amid renewed calls from several opposition parties for a higher percentage of VVPAT slip verification ahead of future elections. Quraishi's account adds a significant historical dimension to that debate, underscoring that the EVM's credibility was itself rebuilt through exactly such a process of political dialogue.