AAP writes to CEC over EVM tampering issue

Hundreds of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) activists on Thursday protested outside the Election Commission headquarters her against alleged tampering of electronic voting machines (EVMs).

The demonstrators raised slogans against the poll panel, carrying placards calling for an end to alleged tampering of EVMs. The party members met EC officials and handed over a letter addressed to Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi.

AAP leader and Delhi Minister Gopal Rai said: "Voices have been raised in Maharashtra, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand against EVM tampering. Our MLA Saurabh Bharadwaj has shown that EVMs can be easily hacked," he said.

Rai, in his letter to the CEC, said that the live demonstration – done on a "replica of the EVMs used by the ECI" – had demolished the idea that voting machines used by the EC were tamper proof. "The Commission should allow technical inspection of its EVMs by the expert panels of various political parties to see if the EVMs can be hacked or not. Polls should be held only on VVPAT-enabled machines so that paper trail guarantees integrity of the electoral process," he wrote.

Asked why they thought EVMs could be rigged, the protesters, many of whom carried replicas of EVM machines, mostly cited Bhardwaj's live demonstration in the Assembly. "This is how BJP won the polls in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Even the division along caste lines could not have helped them with such a huge victory," said the protestors.

AAP also demanded that an all-party committee be formed under the aegis of the EC and be given access to EVMs used in the recent elections in the country.

The party, which claims that EVMs can be manipulated, also sought to drum up support for its campaign through its demonstration outside the EC headquarters, a day before a scheduled all-party meeting with the Commission on the issue.

Bhardwaj, who had hacked an EVM replica on the floor of the Delhi Assembly on May 9, told a press conference that the question was no longer if EVMs could be manipulated, but whether the recent Municipal elections could have been rigged.

The AAP fared poorly in the Municipal polls, which were swept by the Bharatiya Janata Party.

He said he could find out from an EVM ROM which party a particular voter had polled for and the sequence in which votes were cast. Bhardwaj explained that the proposed panel may randomly pick five booths where they suspect rigging had taken place.

One voter from each of those booths could be cross-examined by a judicial magistrate in an in-camera proceeding and asked which party he or she voted for.