AAP to launch 'save democracy campaign' against EVM tampering from tomorrow

Party's Delhi convenor Gopal Rai made the announcement today

The AAP will start a "save democracy campaign" from Thursday and raise its voice strongly against EVM tampering, the party's Delhi convenor Gopal Rai said in New Delhi.

Rai made the announcement during a press conference at the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) headquarters.

He said that party legislator Saurabh Bharadwaj on Tuesday demonstrated in the Delhi Assembly that Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) can be hacked just by "changing the motherboard".

"This is a great danger to democracy. We will start a 'save democracy campaign' from tomorrow (Thursday) and under this campaign AAP MLAs and workers will stage a protest at the office of the Election Commission of India," Rai told reporters.

"AAP brought the truth in public by showing how EVMs can be hacked. We want all future elections to be conducted only by using EVMs with Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT)," Rai said.

Rai also said that AAP will stick to its viewpoint at the all-party meeting on EVMs called by the Election Commission on Friday.

The AAP has been vocal in alleging that EVMs were tampered with in the assembly elections in Punjab and the civic polls in Delhi, both of which it lost.

Using a prototype of what looked like an EVM used by the poll panel, Bharadwaj on Tuesday claimed that codes embedded inside the voting machines can be used to manipulate results.

The Election Commission dismissed Bharadwaj's assertions.

The Delhi Assembly in a day-long special session passed a resolution on Tuesday urging President Pranab Mukherjee and the Election Commission to ensure that EVMs with VVPAT are used in all future elections.

The resolution also called for tallying of votes polled in 25 per cent randomly-selected booths with the paper trail generated by VVPAT machines.