There was no need to panic over the credibility of electronic voting machines (EVMs) as they had stood the test of time, former Chief Election Commissioner Navin B. Chawla said here on Thursday.
Speaking at a training programme for returning officers and assistant returning officers at the Collectorate, he emphatically said that EVMs could not be hacked. “We attempted to introduce the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) in 2009 and it was implemented in 2013. The EVM cannot be tampered with,” he said. Mr. Chawla also said that votes must not be cast for monetary benefits as it would be a disservice to the nation.
Mr. Chawla, along with Collector S. Natarajan, Corporation Commissioner S. Aneesh Sekhar, Additional Collector (Development) S.P. Amrith, Deputy Commissioner P. Manivannan and Assistant Collector (Training) Praveen Kumar oversaw the training programme in which 100 officers took part.