NEW DELHI: Eleven days after the results of the Lok Sabha elections came out, the controversy surrounding the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) refuses to die down as serious allegations were made in the Mumbai North West constituency where the margin of the winning candidate was just 48 votes in a recount.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday said EVMs in India are a “black box” which nobody is allowed to scrutinise, and asserted that “serious concerns” are being raised about transparency in India’s electoral process.
“Democracy ends up becoming a sham and prone to fraud when institutions lack accountability,” Gandhi said and tagged a media report which claimed that a relative of Shiv Sena’s candidate, who won the polls from Mumbai’s North West constituency by 48 votes, had a phone that unlocks an EVM.
The former Congress president also tagged the post on X by Elon Musk in which he talked about eliminating EVMs.
“We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high,” Musk had said in his post on X. The Opposition parties have been raising concerns over EVMs for some time now and had demanded a 100 per cent count of the VVPAT slips which was not allowed.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav said technology experts around the world are openly writing about the dangers of EVM tampering.
“We reiterate our demand that all future elections be conducted using ballot papers,’’ he said.
Coming out in defence of EVMs, former Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar said he would be happy to run a tutorial on secure EVMs for Elon Musk.
Chandrasekhar who headed the Electronics and Information Technology ministry in the previous government, in his reply to Tesla chief indicated the X owner’s comment made it seem like “no one can build secure digital hardware.’’
‘’This is a huge sweeping generalisation statement that implies no one can build secure digital hardware. Wrong. Elon Musk’s view may apply to the US and other places – where they use regular compute platforms to build internet-connected voting machines,’’ he said in a reply to Musk’s post that EVMs were not reliable.
Tesla boss responded saying “anything can be hacked”.
Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia also slammed Rahul Gandhi, saying that people of the country are aware that the Congress party makes claims of EVM hacking if they lose the elections.
Meanwhile, in Mumbai, a poll official said an EVM was a standalone system with “robust administrative safeguards” to protect it from any kind of manipulation and that there was no need of an OTP to unlock it.
Vandana Suryavanshi, returning officer of Mumbai North West Lok Sabha constituency, was reacting to a report in Mid-day newspaper about a kin of Ravindra Waikar, the Shiv Sena candidate who emerged victorious there by a wafer-thin margin of 48 votes, using a mobile phone connected to an EVM during vote counting on June 4.
“The EVM is a standalone system and there is no need for an OTP to unlock it. It is not programmable and has no wireless communication capabilities. It is a complete lie being spread by a newspaper. We have issued notice to Mid-day newspaper under sections 499, 505 of the Indian Penal Code for defamation and spreading false news,” Suryavanshi said in a press conference on Sunday.
As per Vanrai police, Mangesh Pandilkar, brother-in-law of Waikar, was booked under Indian Penal Code section 188 (disobeying official order) on Wednesday for allegedly using a mobile phone at a counting centre in Goregaon on June 4, when results of the general elections were announced.
Suryavanshi said the personal mobile phone of one Dinesh Gurav, the data entry operator of Jogeshwari assembly constituency, was found in the hands of an unauthorised person and action is being taken in this regard.
“Data entry and vote counting are two different aspects. An OTP enables the ARO to open the encore login system for data entry. The counting process is independent and has nothing to do with unauthorised use of mobile phone, which is an unfortunate incident and is being probed,” Suryavanshi added.
“Advance technical features and robust administrative safeguards are in place to rule out any possibility of manipulation. Safeguards include conducting everything in the presence of candidates or their agents,” she said.
The official said neither Waikar nor losing candidate Amol Kirtikar of the Shiv Sena (UBT) had sought a recount but verification of invalid postal ballots was demanded and it was done.
Suryavanshi said CCTV footage in connection with the issue cannot be given unless there are orders from the competent court.
The Supreme Court recently ruled that it cannot dictate the functioning of the Election Commission, a constitutional authority, on the matter of EVMs.
The EC has maintained India’s EVMs are foolproof and cannot be tampered with. Interestingly, European nations have gone back to the ballot voting system.