Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar on Tuesday said EVMs are completely “safe and robust”.
New Delhi:
Dismissing allegations of 'varying EVM battery levels', Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar said electronic voting machines are completely 'safe and robust' and have batteries like a calculator, and not like a mobile phone that needs to be used every day being charged.
CEC Kumar explained that EVMs had three-layer security, including the batteries, and signatures of political party representatives were taken at each level to ensure transparency.
“People also wonder: if pagers can be hacked, why can't EVMs be hacked? Pagers are connected, but EVMs are not,” he said at a press conference while announcing the election dates for Assembly elections in Maharashtra and Jharkhand on Tuesday.
In particular, Israel had hacked pagers from the terrorist organization Hezbollah.
He explained that the batteries put into EVMs are single-use batteries and the signatures of the representatives of each political party are also put on them.
“This is a single-use battery… like a calculator, not like a mobile phone that needs to be charged every day. One battery can be used for about five years,” the CEC said.
“When a machine is put into operation, the battery is put on that day, this happens five or six days before the vote. …even the battery has signatures of party representatives on it. We also don't know when we made this rule, but now it is useful for us,” he said.
CEC Kumar also explained that EVMs had three-layer security and signatures of political party representatives were taken to ensure transparency.
“When the EVMs are sealed, they will be double locked, there will be three-layer security, with CAPF being present, and observers will also be there. On election day, the entire process will be repeated and it has also been filmed,” he added.
“This kind of system, with disclosure and participation, please tell me where else is such a robust system,” Mr Kumar added.
The Congress delegation had filed 20 complaints with the ECI, which CEC Rajiv said will be responded to individually and posted for all to see.
“We have received about twenty complaints about EVMs, we will deal with them individually, fact by fact. We will convey our response to each candidate, because it is our duty, and tell them quickly. We will also publish our answers for everyone,” CEC said. Rajiv Kumar added.
Notably, the Congress had alleged that varying EVM battery levels at different polling stations in Haryana might have affected the poll results on October 8, when the BJP returned to power for the third time in a row, contradicting predictions of defied the polls. The Congress claimed that on EVMs with 99 per cent loading, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won, while the Congress won on other machines with 60 per cent loading.
Speaking to ANI on October 12, Congress leader Pawan Khera also said, “We have sent a list of 20 seats to the Election Commission on which our candidates have filed written and oral complaints of 99 percent battery. This is a strange coincidence. that the machines with a 99 percent battery charge were the ones on which Congress lost. Why did this happen?
The Congress in Haryana could not benefit from the BJP government's decade of anti-incumbency. The BJP won 48 of the 90 seats in the Haryana Assembly, while the Congress managed to win 37 seats. The independents won three seats and the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) won two seats.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
