AAP hacks EVM, EC rejects claim
Kejri: Can rig in 90 seconds
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal dared the Election Commission (EC) to give his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) access to one of its electronic voting machines (EVMs) to prove that it can be “rigged in 90 seconds”.
This was after AAP claimed to have “demonstrated” in the Delhi Assembly how EVMs can be rigged, a claim trashed by the EC, which said a “duplicate” gadget was hacked.
AAP MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj dramatically claimed an EVM can be manipulated by simply feeding a “secret code” into it. Using what his party claimed was a "prototype EVM" developed by "a group of IITians", Mr Bhardwaj, himself an engineer, showed how it can be tampered with to favour a particular candidate. The EC, however, rejected the claim, saying the machine hacked in the Assembly was not the actual equipment used by it.
“It is common sense that gadgets other than ECIEVMs can be programmed to perform in a pre-determined way, but it simply cannot be implied that ECI-EVMs will behave in the same manner because they are technically secured and function under an elaborate administrative and security protocol,” the EC said in a statement.
The “so-called” demonstration on “extraneous and duplicate gadgets” which are not owned by the EC “cannot be exploited to influence our intelligent citizens and electorate to assail or vilify the EVMs used by the EC in its electoral process,” it said.
Delhi Assembly’s day-long special session on Tuesday saw high drama as the ruling AAP sought to demonstrate how easy it is to rig the electronic voting machines (EVMs). The house concluded by passing a resolution urging the president and the election commission to endorse VVPAT in all EVMs.
“All it takes is 90 seconds,” AAP MLA Saurabh Bharadwaj said while demonstrating to the House how secret codes can be used to manipulate the EVMs. AAP was a divided house when the party leadership raised suspicion against EVMs following the defeats in Delhi civic elections and Assembly polls in Punjab and Goa. Kumar Vishwas, one of the senior-most AAP functionaries and sacked minister Kapil Mishra were among the few who said it was not right for the party to blame the EVMs for its electoral defeats.
Mr Bhardwaj, using a dummy EVM, alleged that on the polling a six-digit secret code could be fed to manipulate a machine while casting vote. The Election Commission denied his claim that EVMs can be programmed to favour any particular party.
“We have said that EC should give us an EVM. We only need to change the motherboard,” CM Arvind Kejriwal said. His deputy Manish Sisodia claimed that the democracy is in danger and urged rivals to look beyond the theory of “your machine vs my machine”.
“We can hack EVM machines across Delhi in
three days,” Mr Sisodia said, claiming that a party in power would never have the courage to question the machines.
The Election Commission of India has, however, dismissed the EVM claims. It said that the demonstration of the tampering was of a “lookalike” EVM and it should be understood that it was not possible for anyone to make any electronic gadget which looks like ECI-EVM and demonstrate any “magic or tampering”. In a statement, the EC said: “Very simply put, any ‘lookalike’ machine is just a different gadget, which is manifestly designed and made to function in a ‘tampered’ manner and has no relevance, incidence or bearing on the commission’s EVMs.”