After Elon Musk’s remarks, Opposition leaders raise ‘serious concerns’ on reliability of EVMs

EVMs in India are a “black box,” and nobody is allowed to scrutinize them.

Serious concerns are being raised about transparency in our electoral process.

Democracy ends up becoming a sham and prone to fraud when institutions lack accountability. https://t.co/nysn5S8DCF pic.twitter.com/7sdTWJXOAb

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) June 16, 2024

“Democracy ends up becoming a sham and prone to fraud when institutions lack accountability,” Gandhi said in a post on X.

Yadav too questioned the BJP’s “insistence on using EVM” while reiterating the INDIA bloc leaders’ demand of conducting elections using ballot papers.

‘टेक्नॉलजी’ समस्याओं को दूर करने के लिए होती है, अगर वही मुश्किलों की वजह बन जाए, तो उसका इस्तेमाल बंद कर देना चाहिए।

आज जब विश्व के कई चुनावों में EVM को लेकर गड़बड़ी की आशंका ज़ाहिर की जा रही है और दुनिया के जाने-माने टेक्नोलॉजी एक्सपर्ट्स EVM में हेराफेरी के ख़तरे की ओर… pic.twitter.com/evNAIxP4RG

— Akhilesh Yadav (@yadavakhilesh) June 16, 2024

“Today, when fears of EVM tampering are being expressed in many elections of the world and the world’s renowned technology experts are openly writing about the danger of EVM tampering, then what is the reason behind the insistence on using EVM, BJP should clarify this,” Yadav posted on X.

Earlier today, Musk had called for scrapping the use of EVMs, citing high risks of them being hacked. “We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high,” Musk posted on X.

Countering Musk, former Electronics and Information Technology Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar called his statement a “sweeping generalization”, while highlighting that the India’s EVMs had been “custom designed” and could not be “reprogrammed.”

“@elonmusk’s view may apply to US n other places – where they use regular compute platforms to build Internet connected Voting machines. But Indian EVMs are custom designed, secure and isolated from any network or media – No connectivity, no bluetooth, wifi, Internet. ie there is no way in. Factory programmed controllers that cannot be reprogrammed,” Chandrasekhar said.