New Delhi, Union Finance Minister and senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley on Monday called the Congress’ remarks on EVM tampering “a big lie and garbage”.

The Minister said the Congress party is increasingly becoming contagious.Mr Jaitley, in a series of tweets, said the Congress has been misleading the people and now after Rafale deal and the non-existent loan waiver to 15 industrialists, the Congress’ next big lie is EVM hacking.

“Was the Election Commission & millions of Staffers involved in manufacturing, programming of EVMs & conduct of elections during the UPA Government in collusion with the BJP – absolutely rubbish,” he added.

The Minister said the people would not buy their garbage. “Does the Congress feel that the people are so gullible that they will swallow any garbage? Insanity in the Congress party is increasingly becoming contagious.”

Earlier, the Congress termed the claims by the Indian Journalists’ Association (Europe) that the 2014 Lok Sabha polls as well as the 2018 five-state polls were rigged, as a validation of its doubts on the working of the EVMs.The Opposition party demanded that at least 50 per cent of the VVPATs should be verified with the paper trails.

However, the Election Commission said that it was firmly stands by the foolproof nature of its EVMs deployed in elections in India.’It has come to the notice of Election Commission of India that an event claiming to demonstrate EVMs used by ECI can be tampered with, has been organised in London.

Whereas, ECI has been wary of becoming a party to this motivated slugfest, ECI firmly stands by the empirical facts about foolproof nature of ECI EVMs deployed in elections in India,’ the ECI said in a statement.