After the Uttarakhand High Court rejected a plea questioning the constitutionality of the EVM challenge, the Election Commission’s EVM hackathon will be held on Saturday. The EC will use randomly selected 14 EVMs, which were used in recent Assembly elections in UP, Punjab and Uttarakhand.
The HC restrained all political parties, NGOs and individuals from criticising the use of EVMs in the recent polls.
The challenge will begin at 10 am and end at 2 pm. Of the seven national and 65 recognised regional parties, only two — the NCP and the CPI (M) — have chosen to participate in the ‘challenge’. As the two parties have not given their preference for the EVMs, they would like to tamper with machines brought by the EC to Delhi from Ghaziabad and Gautam Buddha Nagar in UP, Patiala and Bhatinda in Punjab and Dehradun in Uttarakhand.
Meanwhile, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) reiterated that it will organise its own EVM hackathon on Saturday (June 3).
Sources in the Commission said two separate counters have been set up for the CPI(M) and the NCP for the challenge with the participants getting four hours each to tamper with the EVMs. The proceedings will be judged by the members of a technical committee, which would help the Commission to evaluate the machine.
The EVM hacking challenge will be carried out in two parts. In the first, the hackers will have to prove that the EVMs used in the five States were manipulated to favour a particular candidate or political party by altering the results stored in them.
In the second, participants will have to prove that the machines used in the Assembly polls were manipulated before or on the day of voting. Participants are allowed to use either a combination of keys on EVMs or over the air communication devices such as cellphone and bluetooth to tamper with the machines.
The participants - three members per party - can “physically examine” EVMs and check circuits, chips and motherboard, but cannot replace any part. If the machine ceases to function due to its inbuilt anti- tampering mechanism, the participant would be considered to have “failed” the challenge. During challenge, experts of ECI would also be present.
On the other hand, the AAP leaders have also invited leaders from across political parties as well as the EC to participate in the hackathon and examine the EVM that AAP MlA Saurabh Bhardwaj used in the Delhi Assembly to ‘prove’ the EVM tampering allegations.
Other parties such as the BJP, Rashtriya lok Dal, and Communist Party of India have “expressed their intent to observe.