The Election commission of India has announced that it will hold EVM challenge starting June 3 where the political parties will be given an opportunity to prove that EVM can be hacked. The last day to apply for ensuring participation is 26 May. The poll panel, however, made it categorically clear that it would not allow political parties to change any component of the voting machine arguing that it would amount to manufacturing the device. Election commission chief Nasim Zaidi held the press conference to put an end to the concerns raised by opposition partied over tampering of EVM machines.
#WATCH Press conference of Election Commission of India in Delhi https://t.co/xLN5cnH5zO
— ANI (@ANI_news) May 20, 2017
Here are the highlights.
3:53 pm: During our meeting with political parties, we had assured them of organising an open challenge; the ECI now propose open this challenge on June 3 for the parties
3:50 pm: EVMs are not hackable as these, are stand alone machines and not connected to internet and/or any other network
3:45 pm: Replacement of internal circuit of #EVMs is not possible. Our EVMs have strong technological features and are tamper-proof:
3:41 pm: Neither defective machines nor look-alike EVMs can get reinducted into the polling process, says Zaidi
3: 40 pm: It will also be a matter of pride that India will become first country to deploy 100% VVPATs or paper trail in world
3:39 pm: Every machine goes through mock poll, and political party representatives are then told to do a mock poll by polling at least 1000 votes, says CEC
3:38 pm: There are two possibilities of manipulation: during transportation and storage, says CEC.
3:36 pm: New generation EVMs have self diagnostic and tamper proof features, says Zaidi.
3: 35 pm Our EVMs could not be tampered with nor can their components be changed without anyone noticing it.
3:34 pm: People who questioned relaibility of EVMs have not submitted any proof to support their claim yet
3:33 pm: Trojan Horse (a key press sequence) can’t be inserted into EVMs since chip on EVM is one-time programmable&doesn’t have a Wi-fi chip: CEC
3:32 pm: VVPAT’s to be ready by September 2018.
3: 30 pm: Election Commission is confident about integrity, non-tamperability and credibility of EVMs
3:29 pm: Manipulation of EVMs at manufacturing stage is totally rolled out due to stringent security measures taken: CEC Nasim Zaidi
3:27 pm: Complaints came after elections in 5 states,but we did not receive credible material information on EVM tampering from complainants : CEC
3: 26 pm: All future elections will be held with VVPAT along with EVMs across polling stations,to bring in transparency: Naseem Zaidi, CEC;:
