Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, on June 16, said EVMs in India are a "black box" that nobody is allowed to scrutinise, and asserted that "serious concerns" are being raised about transparency in India's electoral process.
The senior Congress leader's comments came after Tesla CEO Elon Musk discussed eliminating EVMs in a post on microblogging site X.
"Democracy ends up becoming a sham and prone to fraud when institutions lack accountability," Gandhi said and tagged a media report that claimed that a relative of Shiv Sena's candidate, who won the polls from Mumbai's northwest by 48 votes, had a phone that unlocks an EVM. Rahul Gandhi also tagged Musk's post on X in which he talked about eliminating EVMs.
Congress ally and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav also joined Rahul Gandhi, raising doubts about the credibility of EVMs and advocating for future elections to be conducted using ballot papers.
He stated that while technology is intended to solve problems, if it becomes a source of problems, its use should be reconsidered. Taking to microblogging site X, Yadav wrote in Hindi, "Technology is meant to solve problems, if it becomes the cause of problems then its use should be stopped".
Taking aim at the BJP on this issue, Yadav pointed out international concerns about EVM tampering expressed by renowned technology experts. He questioned the BJP's insistence on using EVMs despite these apprehensions and called for clarification on this matter.
"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 also referenced Musk's post on the subject and reiterated his party's demand for reverting to ballot papers in all future elections.
Shortly after Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, taking a dig at Rahul Gandhi during an interaction with the press, stated, "Chat bhi meri, pat bhi meri', this will not work every time. If you win EVM is Hero and if you lose EVM. People of the country are now aware of this policy of the Congress party, that's why they have made BJP government for the third time with full majority", reported ANI.
BJP leader Shazia Ilmi also slammed the Opposition leaders' comments, stating, "The fact is widely acknowledged that EVMs cannot be tampered with or hacked. These standalone machines operate using a programmable chip and do not connect to the internet, making hacking impossible".
"As a citizen of the country, if I am to trust someone, I would place my faith in the Supreme Court of India and the Election Commission rather than Elon Musk. When Rahul Gandhi refers to EVMs as black boxes and echoes Elon Musk's statements, he inadvertently raises doubts about election outcomes, including his victory", Ilmi said during an interaction with the press, reported ANI.
Earlier, former Union Minister of Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar had said that Indian Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) are custom-designed, secure, and isolated from any network or media.
"EVMs can be architected and built right as India has done," he said in response to Musk's statement calling for eliminating EVMs on hacking risks.
Musk responded to Chandrasekhar saying, "Anything can be hacked".
"This is a huge sweeping generalization statement that implies no one can build secure digital hardware. Wrong. We would be happy to run a tutorial Elon," said Chandrasekhar in a post on X.
He further said that Musk's view may apply to countries like the US, where they use regular computing platforms to build internet-connected voting machines.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar replied to Musk saying, "Technically ur right - anything is possible E.g..wth quantum compute, i can decrypt any level of encryption, with lab level tech n plenty of resources, i can hack any digital hardware/system incldng flight controls of a glass cockpit of a jet etc etc. But thats a different type of a conversatn from EVMs being secure n reliable vis a vis paper voting. And we can agree to disagree."
In the wake of recent voting irregularities in Puerto Rico’s primary elections, Robert F Kennedy Jr, an independent candidate for President of the United States, has called for a return to paper ballots to ensure the integrity of elections. His stance has been echoed by the Tesla CEO, who voiced concerns over the potential for electronic voting machines to be hacked.
Musk wrote, "We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high".
Puerto Rico's primary elections have been marred by controversy and scrutiny over voting irregularities linked to electronic voting machines (EVMs), as reported by the Associated Press.
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