Allegations by political parties on EVM tampering false: Former Advisor to EC Committee

Former Advisor to Committee of Election Commission KJ Rao on Thursday ruled out the probability of Electronic Voting Machines tampering and rubbished the allegations made by political parties.

Rao categorically said that Indian EVM cannot be tampered, as it does not possess any feature which could allow rigging to happen .

"Indian EVMs cannot be tampered. Nobody can rig the EVM machines as there are so many security elements in it. The machine has a part called the 'micro controller chip' that is only programmable once. Similarly the software code is in the chip is cannot be read, nor can it be re-written," said Rao.

"There are no internet connection or operating system in the EVMs which can lead to tampering or bring any virus in the system. Moving ahead there is no remote connection in the machine, so no tampering can happen this way as well. The allegations made by political parties are absolutely wrong," he added.

The Election Commission of India too rejected allegations of tampering of EVMs made by some political parties after the just-concluded assembly elections.

There is no merit in the claims that EVMs can be tampered with, the poll panel said calling such allegations "wild and baseless."

BSP chief Mayawati, whose party performed poorly in Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, was the first to raise questions on the EVMs.

Terming the results as "shocking", Mayawati had said the Election Commission should stop the counting and withhold results and hold fresh polls using traditional paper ballots.