The Election Commission on Friday assured all political parties that EVMs were secured and could not be tampered with. It had convened an all-party meeting over the issue of EVM and other electoral reforms earlier in the day.
"The Chief Election Commissioner assured the reliability of the EVMs and asserted they were secured and cannot be tampered with," said JD(U) leader K.C. Tyagi who left the all party meeting midway for another engagement. "After the CEC's address, experts from IITs also sought to clarify doubts that many political parties have about the reliability of the EVMs. Let us see what is the outcome of this meeting."
Manjinder Singh Sirsa, the BJP legislator from Rajouri Garden, "The EC today informed in detail about the security features of the EVMs and asserted that they cannot be tampered with at all. So far there have been 37 cases in various courts regarding EVM tampering. The judgements in 30 of those cases have come and all 30 have been in favour of the EVMs being tamper proof."
The EC has received the finances for buying the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) device with EVMs and will have them activated by 2019 General Elections. It would receive updated VVPATs in the time period stretching from August 2017 to September 2018. The EC also asserted that the 2019 Lok Sabha elections would take place in the VVPAT format.
Representatives from seven national parties and 48 state parties were invited by the poll panel for the meeting at the Constitution Club, to reassure the parties that Electronic Voting Machines cannot be tampered with and were secured.
A host of opposition parties—chiefly the Arvind Kejirwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)—have alleged that EVMs were tampered with in the February-March five state assembly elections and the just concluded Delhi civic polls.
Opposition parties, including the Congress and the Trinamool Congress, had earlier petitioned the poll panel as well as President Pranab Mukherjee about the vulnerability of the EVMs.
AAP legislator Saurabh Bharadwaj, during a special session of the Delhi Assembly, had sought to demonstrate the procedure for tampering with an EVM.
The poll panel dismissed his assertion outright saying the machine used by Bharadwaj was a "look-alike" of an ECEVM and therefore, could be used to demonstrate "any magic" or tampering.
