All eyes on Election Commission's EVM challenge today

The Election Commission will organize the EVM challenge in New Delhi today where political parties will try to prove that the machines can be rigged.

However, only the Nationalist Congress Party and CPI(M) have shown willingness to participate in the challenge.

The Commission has pulled out 14 Electronic Voting Machines for the challenge from its strong rooms in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand where assembly polls were held recently.

The challenge was organised after several major opposition parties had claimed that the faith of people in the machines has eroded.

After the UP assembly polls, BSP, Aam Aadmi Party, Congress and others had questioned the EVMs alleging that they were tampered with.

However, when the poll body invited all parties to participate in the challenge, the AAP and Congress raising some issue with the existing framework of challenge, decided not to take part.

The challenge will begin at 10 AM and end at 2 PM and the challengers will get four hours each to tamper with the EVM machines.

The NCP and CPI (M) have nominated three representatives each. The members of a technical committee which helps the ECI to evaluate the EVMs, will judge the proceedings.

Meanwhile, CPI (M) has said, it will not try to hack EVM during the challenge, but will suggest precautionary measures to ensure transparent polls.

But, the Aam Admi Party has planned to organize its own EVM challenge today to show that EVMs can be tampered.

Yesterday in a crucial development, the Uttarakhand high court barred all political parties, individuals, media and even social media networks, like Facebook and Twitter, from criticising the use of EVMs in the recently conducted assembly polls.

The court was hearing a PIL filed by Uttarakhand state congress committee vice-president Ramesh Pandey, who sought quashing of the EVM challenge saying it was "illegal unconstitutional and beyond the jurisdiction of Article 324.