EC to hold hackathon from June 3
NEWDELHI: The election commission on Saturday announced that it will hold an open challenge from June 3 for political parties to prove their allegations that electronic voting machines (EVMs) can be tampered with.
It also said all elections hereafter will use VVPAT or open paper trail in tandem with EVMs.
The challenge will be open only to recognised national and regional parties which can nominate up to three representatives, provided they are all of Indian nationality.
Chief election commissioner Nasim Zaidi said all political parties that want to participate in the challenge will have to confirm their participation to the poll panel by 5 pm on May 26. The challenge is mostly likely to be spread over 4 to 5 days, but the duration will be finalised depending on the response of the political parties, he said. The CEC also said that all future elections will be held with Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines along with EVMs in all polling stations to bring in transparency.
The poll panel will consider the demand for increasing the display time on the VVPAT machines from seven seconds to 15 and will soon announce the decision on the percentage of votes that will be counted using the paper trail machines.
Most political parties at an all-party meeting last week had urged the EC to count a percentage of voted by tallying the results shown by the EVMs with the VVPAT results.
The EC’s decision to hold the open challenge comes in the wake of allegations by parties such as the BSP, the AAP and the TMC that the EVMs used in the assembly elections in five states including UP in February-March were rigged.