EVM hackathon challenge 'on', says EC

The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Friday declared that it will hold its Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) hacking challenge as scheduled, after the Uttarakhand High Court dismissed a PIL against the move.

The PIL filed by Nainital resident Dr Ramesh Pandey seeking a stay on the challenge was dismissed by the court.

The challenge will begin from 10 a.m. tomorrow.

The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) were the only two parties that registered for the hackathon challenge. Both the parties have nominated three persons for the challenge.

The ECI has put up 14 random EVMs for the hacking challenge.

The Election Commission in its letter said that the machine are randomly selected and brought sealed from different polling booth from five state which went on polling recently.

The poll panel issued the challenge after several major opposition parties, including the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) alleged that the EVMs used in the recently concluded assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh were tampered with.

The ECI invited seven national and 49 state parties recognised by it for the challenge. It had left out smaller parties and Independents who had contested the recent polls from participating.