The Aam Aadmi Party is all set to hold its own electronic voting machine challenge on Saturday – the same day as the Election Commission. The announcement by AAP comes after the poll body rejected the party’s idea of conducting an “open hackathon”, PTI reported.
According to the Election Commission’s guidelines, the participants would be allowed to “physically examine” the machines in the hackathon event, but will not be allowed to replace any part of it. The AAP had complained that it will not be possible for the participants to prove tampering “without a free hand” to do so. After the EC refused to consider AAP’s objection, the Arvind Kejriwal-led party announced its own ‘hackathon’.
“We have conveyed to Election Commission that we will hold the EVM hackathon on the day of its EVM challenge,” AAP Delhi unit secretary Saurabh Bharadwaj, who had demonstrated the hacking of an EVM in Delhi assembly on May 9, said on Thursday. The party leader further said he would use the same machine he had on that day. The Election Commission had then said it was an EVM “look-alike” and not its machine.
Bharadwaj said if contestants were to follow the guidelines mentioned by the poll body, then tampering could never be proved. “We challenge all experts, including those of ECI, BHEL and Electronics Corporation of India Limited, to try hacking them following ECI’s restrictions,” he said according to Hindustan Times. “They will not be able to do it.”
The EC had thrown an open challenge to all national and state political parties from June 3 onwards to prove that the machines cannot be tampered with. However, none of the major political parties have opted to take part in the actual challenge. The only parties to participate will be the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Nationalist Congress Party.
Allegations of EVM tampering had come up after the Bharatiya Janata Party had swept state elections in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. AAP claimed that it had lost the Punjab polls because of this, and later stepped up its charges after the BJP won in Delhi’s civic polls as well.
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