“We won’t be bullied into giving up EVMs,” Mr. Arora says.

The Election Commission is open to any criticism or feedback from stakeholders, especially political parties, but it will not be intimidated into giving up Electronic Voting Machines and returning to ballot boxes, Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora said on Thursday.

He was speaking at an international conference on ‘Making our elections inclusive & accessible,’ organised a day ahead of the National Voters Day. His remarks came days after a self-styled cyberexpert said EVMs could be hacked. The Delhi police have filed a case against him on a EC complaint.

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“We are open to any criticism from stakeholders. But we are not going to be intimidated or bullied or pressurised or coerced into giving up EVMs and [re]start the era of ballot boxes,” Mr. Arora said.

Speaking at a conference in New Delhi, he said: “We are not going back to that era where we have ballot papers being lifted, muscle men being employed, besides the delay in the counting and too much harassment of the polling staff on the ground.” Recounting the experience in the recent Assembly elections in five States, Mr. Arora said six incidents were reported from among 1.76 lakh polling booths.

“I am repeating, six anecdotal or real incidents out of 1.76 lakh polling booths. I am not defending those incidents, there were some lapses in those EVMs that were not even used for the elections… Visible actions were taken very swiftly. However, we are not happy even with those six incidents. In elections, we should have zero tolerance for any incident of such nature,” he said.

Mr. Arora said the EVMs were manufactured in highly secured conditions by the two public sector undertakings that were doing a lot of work for the country’s defence establishments.

“Why have we made it [EVM] like a football, and are doing a motivated slugfest over it,” he asked.