Congress organised EVM hackathon in London, claims Ravi Shankar Prasad

New Delhi, Jan 22: Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Tuesday alleged that the Congress had organised the EVM hackathon in London in which a cyber expert claimed that the 2014 general elections were rigged.

The event was sponsored by the Congress, the minister of Electronics and IT said at a press conference here.

Prasad raised questions about the expert's credentials, saying: "I have been IT minister for four-and-a-half years, I have never heard of him. This man comes from the US, face covered. Don't understand this drama. Such colossal nonsense."

Shuja's claims on Gopinath Munde being killed because he knew of the 2014 "rigging", the minister said: "He (Gopinath Munde) is not here to respond. He died in an accident in Delhi. Sudhir Gupta, an AIIMS doctor, has said he did the post-mortem and Mr Munde died of a neck injury. How can they call it murder?"

The second "bakwas (nonsense)", Prasad said, was that EVMs were hacked for all elections but those in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, the states that the BJP lost to the Congress in last month's state polls.

An Indian cyber expert, seeking political asylum in the US, Monday claimed the 2014 general election was "rigged" through the electronic voting machines, which, he said can be hacked.

"We will expose this claim," Prasad said, adding that the Congress was insulting the 2014 mandate.

Addressing a press conference in London via Skype, the man, identified as Syed Shuja, said he fled India in 2014 because he felt threatened in the country after the killing of some of his team members.

PTI