EC provides details of 14 EVMs to NCP for hacking challenge

The Election Commission on Thursday wrote to the Nationalist Congress Party giving details of some randomly selected EVMs brought from Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand for conducting the EVM hacking challenge on Saturday.

The NCP will participate in the Election Commission's challenge on June 3 to test the credibility of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). The EVM challenge in which doubting political parties have been given an opportunity to prove that the EVMs can be hacked, will be held between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.

"A total of 14 randomly selected EVMs used in different polling booths during the General Elections to the state assemblies of Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand in February-March 2017 have been brought for use in the EVM challenge to be organised," the Election Commission of India said in its letter.

The NCP had not chosen any four EVMs as per the framework and left it to the EC.

Therefore, to organise the challenge, the ECI has brought 14 EVMs from Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand for conducting the challenge, the commission said.

The Commission, however, turned down the NCP's requests to provide serial numbers of battery and memory of the EVMs.

"It is clarified that since the EVMs brought to ECI headquarters are currently in a sealed condition the required information can be seen at the time of the challenge on opening the EVMs," it said.

--IANS

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