Reacting to the Election Commission of India’s open challenge to all the political parties beginning June 3 to hack Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) under certain terms and conditions, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Saturday said that one, who hacks the EVM in real during the polling days, did not get guidelines from the EC or work according to them. The party demanded full freedom to prove their allegations that EVM manipulation was behind BJP’s massive win in the recent election.
In a hurriedly-called Press conference late on Saturday evening, AAP leader Sanjay Singh claimed that there is no ‘clarity’ on the EC’s challenge.
“We proved in the Delhi Assembly that the EVM can be tampered with and the motherboard can be changed. But the challenge that the EC is giving lacks clarity because the word ‘Hackathon’ means to give a free-hand to hackers to hack a particular machine,” he said.
“Setting conditions for hacking EVMs is akin to asking someone to swim with his hands and legs tied,” he added.
“There is no such clause that the hacker would be allowed to touch only a selective part of the machine in a hackathon but anything,” he said.
Sanjay said that representatives from the AAP will meet the EC in the next two days and demand free-hand over the EVM during the hackathon. “Person hacking EVM should
not operate on the EC’s guidelines,” he added.
Earlier in the day, the Chief Election Commissioner of India Dr Nasim Zaidi threw an open challenge to all national and State political parties to tamper with EVMs from June 3 onwards.