EC invites all parties on May 12 to redress EVM issue

In order to allay doubts raised by political parties over the allegation of rigged Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), the Election Commission has scheduled an all political parties meeting on May 12 where issues related to electoral reforms, besides non-tamperable EVMs, would be discussed.

This came hours after the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), during a special session of the Delhi assembly, conducted a live demonstration on how EVMs can be tampered with.

Reacting to the demonstration, the poll panel said the machine used to conduct live demonstration was a 'look-alike'' which was made to function in a 'tampered' manner.

"It is commonsense 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 the ECI EVMs are technically secured and function under an elaborate Administrative and Security Protocol," an official release said.

"Such so called demonstration on extraneous and duplicate gadgets which are not owned by the ECI 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 added.

Conducting a mock poll on an EVM machine, AAP leader Saurabh Bharadwaj demonstrated how despite giving two votes each to various parties; the final count showed that votes of some parties had been transferred to one party.

Soon after a demonstration, Kejriwal alleged tampering of EVMs poses a real 'threat' to the country.

"Saurabh is a computer engineer who has worked with chips in the past, and today, he has shown how easily the EVM can be rigged. This is a serious threat to democracy. Citizens in unison should raise their voices against this," he said.