Election Commission invites parties to send experts to prove tampering charge

The Election Commission on Saturday invited recognised political parties to an “Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) Challenge” beginning June 3 to demonstrate that the machine can be, or were, during the five recent Assembly elections, tampered with. Only Indian experts are allowed to participate in the event.

The challenge will be open for four to five days, for the political parties that participated in the Assembly elections in Goa, Punjab, Manipur, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. An independent team of experts will supervise the proceedings, which will be video-recorded.

Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi said the political parties, each of which can nominate three experts, had to confirm their participation by 5 p.m. on May 26. Each party will be assigned four EVMs of their choice, picked up from EC warehouses in any Assembly constituency.

Can open machine

They can also accompany the EVMs from warehouses to the venue at the EC headquarters, at their own cost.

Although the parties’ experts will be allowed to open and inspect the machine, they will not be allowed to tweak its components, as the EC said changing the internal circuit was like changing the whole device itself.