The Electronic Voting Machine, used by the Election Commission
The Election Commission’s ‘EVM challenge’ where political parties will have the opportunity to prove hacking of electronic voting machines (EVMs) has begun. The nod to the challenge came after the Uttarakhand High Court dismissed a petition that had questioned the constitutionality of the event.
Petitioner Ramesh Pande had contended that the EC’s move was in contravention of Article 324 of the Constitution and was therefore ultra vires. As per section 80 (a) of the Representation of the People Act, only the high court had the prerogative to organise a hackathon like this, he argued.
While seven national parties and 49 state parties had been invited to the challenge, only NCP and CPI-M have applied to participate. While each party is allowed three representatives, they will be given four machines and four hours to hack into it. The machines have been brought from Punjab, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh where recent Assembly elections were held.
At the same time, the Aam Aadmi Party, which had raised complaints of tampering of the machines following its defeat in the Punjab and Goa polls, will conduct its own ‘hackathon’ today after its request of a ‘open hackathon’ was shot down by the Election Commission. AAP had also asked the EC to remove some of the restrictions it had placed in its EVM challenge.
The party said technical experts and representatives from other parties, Election Commission and the companies which produce the EVMs are invited to the event. The machine that will be used in the exercise will be the one that was shown by MLA Saurabh Bharadwaj during his demonstration in the Delhi assembly last month, which the EC had called a ‘look-alike’ and not an ‘ECI-EVM.’
