The much-hyped ‘open challenge’ to tamper electronic voting machines (EVMs) turned out to be a damp squib on Saturday. The only two political parties — the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) — that accepted the Election Commission’s challenge to manipulate the EVMs, did not make any attempt to hack it and, instead, chose to witness the demonstration of functioning of EVMs as an “academic exercise”.
Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi later said representatives of the CPI(M) stated they don’t want to participate in the challenge but wish to understand the EVM process while the NCP’s representatives said they too don’t want to participate in any challenge and were only interested in participating in an academic exercise. The CEC said “no tampering” had taken place and the parties only wanted to understand the working of the machines.
This effectively means that the Election Commission’s EVM challenge, which was open to seven national parties and 49 State parties, went unchallenged and would help the EC to cement its claims that the machines under administrative and technical safeguards are non-tamperable.
Zaidi said the issue of “tamperability of machines” should be closed with the end of the challenge. “The machines are not tamperable. The issue tamperability of machines should be closed with this and with VVPAT (Voter verified paper audit trail),” Zaidi said. The CEC said the challenge should not be seen in terms of victory or defeat. “It was a mutually learning exercise,” he said.
Zaidi also said in future if anyone “violates” the order of the Uttarakhand High Court on the constitutionality of the EVM challenge by indulging in its “unhealthy criticism”, the EC will consider the matter and take a decision.
Zaidi said the CPM members were given a detailed demonstration by the commission about EVMs and they were “satisfied”. “CPM said they do not want to participate in the challenge and only want to understand and see the whole EVM process. A detailed demonstration was given to them and their technical doubts were cleared in depth,” Zaidi told reporters at the end of the challenge. Zaidi added that the CPM representatives expressed complete satisfaction over the process and suggested such exercises to create awareness about it.
In reply to queries that the NCP representatives claimed the exercise was an ‘eye-wash’ and they were not ‘allowed’ to hack the machines, Zaidi explained that all opportunity was given to them to take on the challenge and they still have an option to come back to the EC to attempt the challenge again.
He said the NCP mentioned that the source of their doubts has been alleged problems with EVMs during municipal elections in Maharashtra. The Commission clarified that EVMs used by State Election Commission, Maharashtra for urban local body elections do not belong to the EC. “The NCP in a letter has expressed concerns on eight issues and we will be responding on it separately,” Zaidi said.
Though the four-hour EVM challenge began at 10 am, both the NCP and the CPI(M), were given a demo of the EVMs and the voter-verifiable paper audit trail-VVPAT or equipped machines, which produce a paper receipt of the voter’s choice for proof. In the closed-door exercise, much security related features of the machines were shown.
“The parties “only wanted to understand the functionality of EVMs and discuss and understand the technical aspects of the machines. They also expressed desire to interact with the Technical Expert Committee (TEC) and had a detailed doubt clearing session in which in depth technical doubts were clarified by TEC of the Commission.
While the CPI(M) delegation watched a demonstration on the various security checks involved with the machines, the NCP team interacted with Commission’s technical committee of experts.
“The NCP team expressed their willingness to opt out requesting that Commission should evolve a system which clearly distinguishes ECI-EVMs from SEC EVMs. Commission has taken note of NCP’s suggestions,” the EC officials said.