Arunachal CEO allays pol parties' fears of EVM tampering

Arunachal Pradesh chief electoral officer Kaling Tayeng allaying fears of political parties in the state today said that there is no scope for tampering the EVMs during the poll process.

The assembly polls in the north eastern state is due next year and the Arunachal Pradesh Congress Committee, Peoples Party of Arunachal and National Peoples Party had drawn the attention of the Election Commission urging it to conduct elections in the state through ballot papers fearing that the ruling BJP government in the state could manipulate the election result by tampering with the EVMs.

We are appealing the ECI to conduct next years elections in Arunachal Pradesh through ballot papers so that the deserving candidates and not the candidates with wealth, power and technology to influence and manipulate the EVM results, win, the parties said in a joint statement yesterday.

Stating that question of tampering EVMs does not arise and "is not at all possible", Tayeng said that the EC had already clarified its position in this matter. The Commission had also discussed the matter with experts and political parties.

The EVMs are cent per cent tamper proof and are not hackable. All the political parties are requested to involve themselves during first level checking (FLC) to clear their doubts," he added.

The CEO in a statement here informed that as per ECIs direction, the FLC) of EVMs and VVPATs in Arunachal Pradesh had started from June one.

The FLC is being done by well-trained engineers from Electronic Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), the manufacturer of EVM and VVPAT machines. Before election, two layers checking of EVMs are done. This is only the first level checking before the general election," he said.

The FLC is done only to identify the defective EVMs/VVPATs which require repairing and the properly working ones are kept under pink paper sealed cover which would be removed during commissioning of EVMs, Taeyng said in a statement.

For the FLC and other EVM-related work, the political parties are involved, he added.