EVM row: EC to meet political parties to discuss on hackathon

Representatives from 55 political parties will meet officials of the EC to discuss on the EVM row on Friday.

New Delhi, May 12: The issue of tampering of electronic voting machines has been hogging the limelight since the time the results of the five assembly elections were declared in March this year.

On Friday, officials of the Election Commission are set to meet representatives from 55 political parties from across the country to discuss on the entire row in the national capital, say reports.

Reports add that the EC members will also discuss with political leaders about the upcoming hackathon to prove that the EVMs are tamper-proof in the meeting.

The meeting is coming at a time after the ruling Aam Aadmi Party proved in the Delhi Assembly that the machines could be tampered recently. On Thursday, hundreds of AAP workers demonstrated outside the EC headquarters in Delhi demanding that voter-verifiable paper audit trail- equipped EVMs be used in future elections.

The VVPAT-equipped EVMs dispense paper slips which help voters confirm that their vote has indeed gone to the candidate of their choice.

Participating in a discussion on the issue during a day-long special session of the Delhi Assembly earlier this week, AAP legislator Saurabh Bhardwaj claimed that a voting machine could be manipulated by simply feeding it with a "secret code".

Using what his party claimed was a prototype EVM developed by a group of IITians, Bhardwaj, himself an engineer, showed how it could be tampered with to favour a particular candidate.

Right from Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati to AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal, several political leaders in recent past have accused that EVMs could be manipulated to favour a particular party or a candidate in any election.

However, the EC has denied all these charges and is set to conduct a hackathon where experts could come and check the veracity of EVMs.

OneIndia News