NEW DELHI – The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) “demonstrated” ways to “rig” EVMs in the Delhi Assembly, which the BJP said was an attempt to divert attention from charges of “bribery” against Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.
The AAP’s attempt to whip up the issue comes at a time the party is in the eye of a political storm over its sacked minister Kapil Mishra’s allegations of corruption against Kejriwal and minister Satyendar Jain.
Mishra, who was suspended from AAP’s primary membership yesterday, said the party should stop living in “denial” and accept the fact that people do not vote for Kejriwal anymore.
In a discussion on the issue during the day-long special session of the Assembly, AAP MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj claimed a voting machine could be manipulated by simply feeding it with a “secret code”. He demonstrated how it could be done using what party sources said was a “prototype EVM” developed by “a group of IITians”.
The Election Commission, on the other hand, reiterated that the EVMs used by it were tamperproof. It said the demonstration on a “look-alike” EVM cannot be used to “vilify” those actually used for elections.
“It is commonsense that gadgets other than ECI EVMs can be programmed to perform in a pre-determined way, but it simply cannot be implied that ECI EVMs will behave in the same manner because these are technically secured and function under an elaborate administrative and security protocol,” the EC said.
