EVM tampering, electoral reforms: EC to meet with political parties today

The meeting will be held around 10 am in which the EVM issue and other electoral reforms will be discussed.

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EC holds an all-party meeting regarding EVM issue and other Electoral Reforms, in Delhi on Friday. (Source: ANI photo)

The Election Commission of India will today hold an all party meeting to discuss the issue of alleged EVM tampering as well as electoral reforms that it has proposed. The EC has invited seven national and 48 state parties to the meeting during which the commission is also likely to throw an “open challenge” to prove allegations of EVM tampering.

On Thursday several Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) workers protested outside the EC headquarters against the alleged tampering. They demanded the setting up of an all-party committee to investigate the matter. This after an AAP MLA, Saurabh Bhardwaj, during a special Delhi Assembly session, demonstrated how an EVM can be hacked. He had used a prototype EVM for the purpose.

Rejecting the EVM tampering claims made by AAP, the EC had on Tuesday said that demonstration by AAP in Delhi Assembly doesn’t reveal anything on the tampering of the EVMs. It said that the EVM which Bhardwaj used was a ‘look-alike gadget’ of what is used during elections.

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The statement issued by the commission said, “It is common sense that gadgets other than ECI-EVMs 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 “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 Commission in its electoral process, it said.

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