EVMs can't be tampered with. Here's why

After BJP's landslide victory in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the BSP and the AAP have been alleging EVM tampering to rig results.

New Delhi, March 17: After the Bharatiya Janata Party's landslide victory in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Aam Aadmi Party have been alleging EVM tampering to rig results. But can these EVMs really be tampered with? How sound are an EVMs electronic and technical security features? Here is what the ECI says.

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The software used in these machines is burnt into a 'One Time programmable/Masked chip' so it cannot be altered or tampered with. Further, these machines are not networked either by wire or by wireless to any other machine or system. Therefore, there is no possibility of data corruption.

The software of EVMs is developed in-house by BEL a Defence Ministry PSU and ECIL, an Atomic Energy Ministry's PSU independently. The vote can be recorded by an elector from the ballot unit only after the presiding officer enables the ballot on the Control Unit, the machine does not receive any signal from outside at any time.

During production in the factory, functional testing is done by a production group as per the laid down quality plan and performance test procedures. Samples of EVMs from production batches are regularly checked for functionality by a quality assurance group, which is an independent unit within the manufacturing firms.

Certain additional features were introduced in 2006 in ECI-EVMs such as dynamic coding between ballot unit and Control Unit, installation of a realtime clock, a full display system and date and time stamping of every key pressed in EVM.

All the above-mentioned facts about the EVMs came from the Election Commission that is confident that integrity of elections has not been compromised and given the technical features, EVMs cannot be tampered with.

OneIndia News