Lok Sabha Elections 2024 | Rahul urges Election Commission to ensure complete transparency or scrap EVMs

NEW DELHI: Questioning the reliability of EVMs, Indian National Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday asked the Election Commission to either ensure complete transparency in the machines and process or scrap them.

The demand came a day after the party leader alleged that electronic voting machines are “black boxes” and no one is allowed to scrutinise them, further raising serious concerns about the transparency of the electoral process.

“If our democratic institutions are hijacked, the only safeguard is an electoral process that is transparent to the people,” Gandhi said in a post on X.

“EVMs are currently a black box. The EC must either ensure complete transparency in the machines and the process or scrap them,” the former Indian National Congress president said.

“Before electronic voting machines can be treated as foolproof, the Election Commission of India should release data on how many malfunctions were found in them during the election period,” said Gaurav Gogoi, leader of the Indian National Congress party.

“How many machines displayed wrong time, date and vote count? How many EVMs had parts replaced? Counting units, voting units? How many EVMs were found defective during the mock polls?” he asked.

“Having contested elections I can confidently say that these machines showed inaccurate results. I hope the Election Commission will make the above data public as the people have a right to know,” Gogoi also said in his X post.

Citing media reports that a relative of the Shiv Sena candidate for Mumbai North West Lok Sabha constituency was found to be using a mobile phone “connected” to an electronic voting machine during the vote counting on June 4, a fresh political battle has erupted over allegations by Gandhi and other opposition leaders that they tampered with the machines.

However, Vandana Suryavanshi, the district electoral officer, noon The newspaper labelled the report as “fake news” and announced that it had sent the paper a defamation notice.

She argued that the EVMs are standalone systems, are not programmable and have no wireless communication capabilities.

The BJP slammed opposition leaders over the issue and demanded that the Election Commission should book all those who “spread lies” by publishing news reports.

Gandhi and others have questioned the reliability of EVMs and on Sunday quoted a post by social media platform X chairman and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who spoke about scrapping EVMs and claimed the risk of hacking was “too high.”

“Electronic voting machines should be abolished. The risk of human or AI hacking is small, but still too high,” Musk said, responding to a post by US politician Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who claimed there had been “hundreds of cases of voter fraud linked to electronic voting machines” in Puerto Rico’s primary elections.

Congress ally and Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav also questioned the reliability of EVMs and demanded that all future elections should be held using ballot papers.

“Indian EVMs are ‘black boxes’ which no one is allowed to scrutinise. Serious concerns are being raised about the transparency of the electoral process. When the system lacks accountability, democracy ends up being a sham and prone to fraud,” Gandhi said in a post on X, tagging media reports that a relative of Ravindra Waikal, the Shiv Sena candidate who won in Mumbai North West constituency by 48 votes, had a mobile phone which could unlock EVMs.

Former Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) hit back at Musk’s criticism of EVMs, saying the billionaire businessman’s views could also be applied to the US and other places where “internet-connected voting machines” are being built using ordinary computing platforms.