The Delhi High Court today has deferred its hearing in a plea seeking directions to the Election Commission of India to stop the use of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) and use ballot paper in any forthcoming elections, alleging EVMs can easily be “hacked”, “managed” to manipulate election results.
The matter was listed before the bench led by Chief Justice D.N. Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh, which deferred the hearing to August 3, as there was some connectivity-issue and petitioner couldn’t join the proceedings.
The plea has been filed by C.R. Jaya Sukin, who has sought directions to the Election Commission of India and Ministry of Home Affairs and Law & Justice.
The plea stated that, “EVMs can be hacked is a threat that has been given not only in India, but in many other countries, which is why a number of them have banned the voting machines. EVMs, like all other machines, are prone to errors and malfunctioning. No machine ever made anywhere in the world is infallible.”
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It further stated that, “Apart from manipulating the EVM software and replacing many hardware parts, discussions with knowledgeable sources revealed that Indian EVMs can be hacked in many ways.”
“Each EVM contains two EEPROMs inside the Control Unit in which the voting data is stored. They are completely unsecured and the data inside EEPROMs can be manipulated from an external source. It is very easy to read (data from) the EEPROMs and manipulate them. The most deadly way to hack Indian EVMs is by inserting a chip with Trojan inside the display section of the Control unit. This requires access to the EVM for just two minutes and these replacement units can be made for a few hundred rupees. Bypassing completely all inbuilt securities, this chip would manipulate the results and give out “fixed” results on the EVM screen. The Election Commission is completely oblivious to such possibilities. A demonstration of these vulnerabilities is on the cards,” the plea added.