A government official sitting with EVM. (Getty images)
Even as Aam Aadmi Party carried out an exercise in the Delhi Assembly to demonstrate the vulnerability of EVMs, a source in Election Commission of India said it was all done on a ‘prototype EVM’. The EC has now announced the date for hackathon which will be conducted in the third week of May.
“They are showing everything with a prototype EVM. Let them prove their charges during the EVM hackathon challenge,” a source in ECI told CNN-News18.
Former Chief Election Commissioner Navin Chawla questioned the EVM stunt by AAP and asked where did the machines come from.
“Heard a demonstration was made in Delhi Assembly how EVMs can be hacked….My question is where did these machines come from?” said Chawla.
Chawla said, surely, these machines cannot be the ones issued by the EC.
Every party that loses elections tends to blame the EVMs, said Chawla.
Chawla said it is impossible to create an EVM that belongs to the EC.
Saurabh Bhardwaj, who led the charge in demonstrating how EVMs can be tampered with, said: “If match fixing in cricket is a truth, then EVM tampering is also a truth.”
The Delhi BJP was quick to denounce the exercise carried out in the Assembly.
“In Delhi Assembly, AAP MLAs mocking democracy, another stunt to divert public attention from Kejriwal’s corruption (sic),” read a tweet from Delhi BJP.
The sacked AAP minister Kapil Mishra blamed the theatrics on having ‘lost mental balance’.
“The party has lost mental balance. The MCD elections result is not because of EVMs…Kejriwal is very unpopular now and people did not vote for him,” said Mishra.