Hi Friends,

Even as I launch this today ( my 80th Birthday ), I realize that there is yet so much to say and do. There is just no time to look back, no time to wonder,"Will anyone read these pages?"

With regards,
Hemen Parekh
27 June 2013

Now as I approach my 90th birthday ( 27 June 2023 ) , I invite you to visit my Digital Avatar ( www.hemenparekh.ai ) – and continue chatting with me , even when I am no more here physically

Tuesday 23 January 2018

WHO IS AFRAID ? AND WHY ?


Simultaneous  Polling

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Once more , two days ago , PM Shri Modi had strongly urged all political parties to reach a consensus in respect of holding simultaneous elections for Lok Sabha and all the State Assemblies


Shri Modi added that besides saving money and manpower, holding state and Lok Sabha polls simultaneously would save time and not come in the way of taking important decisions, which the government cannot do once the model code of conduct comes into effect.


Modi said Rs 1,100 crore was spent in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections and this expense went up to Rs 4,000 crore in 2014. This expenditure excluded the money spent by candidates and political parties.





I am a strong supporter of this idea and my thoughts on the subject of Electoral Reforms are summarized at :






But I never imagined that the following Mobile App  which I had suggested some 5 years ago for facilitating simultaneous polls , would find a perfect technological solution in BLOCKCHAIN  !


I have been hearing ( but , not understanding ) about BLOCKCHAIN for past one year, in the context of its application for mining / trading in Crypto-Currency – which to me, appears something very sinister !


Now comes the news that BLOCKCHAIN technology can vastly facilitate MOBILE-BASED VOTING !


If so, EC ( Election Commission  ) should ,

develop VotesApp by end of Feb 2018


give a demo to political parties in March 2018


conduct a parallel run ( along with EVM-VVPAT ) for Karnataka State Election in May 2018


Publish the results of both methods in June 2018

Those who have any doubts re suitability of BLOCKCHAIN technology in voting , may want to refer to :



When designing a new voting system, a core tenet would be to remove all need for “trust,” and place strong emphasis on open verification of the process and the votes. A similar problem was addressed with digital currency such as Bitcoin and Etherium.

On the blockchain, each group of transactions is hashed together, along with a hash of the previous block, and the entire blockchain would be publicly accessible.

Using a blockchain for digital voting could record both voter and candidate ID, as well as the time. The voter IDs are a public / private key pair, not traceable to a voter’s identity.



Another application for blockchain technology is voting.

By casting votes as transactions, we can create a blockchain which keeps track of the tallies of the votes.

This way, everyone can agree on the final count because they can count the votes themselves, and because of the blockchain audit trail, they can verify that no votes were changed or removed, and no illegitimate votes were added.



Among the startups that followed in an attempt to build upon the Blockchain to create a secure voting system was a Virginia-based company called FollowMyVote.

There is a common misconception that voting cannot be done online in a secure way.



Security of digital voting is always the biggest concern when considering to implement a digital voting system.

With such monumental decisions at stake, there can be no doubt about the system’s ability to secure data and defend against potential attacks.

One way the security issues can be potentially solved is through the technology of blockchains.

23  Jan  2018





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