Akhilesh Yadav Questions Thoroughness of EVMs, Demands to Bring Back Ballot Papers

Lucknow: Questioning the transparency and thoroughness of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVM), Samajwadi Party Chief Akhilesh Yadav, on Sunday, demanded the usage of ballot papers again.

Yadav, the former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, in a post on X in Hindi, wrote, “Technology is meant to solve problems, if it becomes the cause of problems then its use should be stopped.”

Targeting the BJP over the issue, Yadav said, "Today, when fears of EVM tampering are being expressed in many elections of the world and the world's renowned technology experts are openly writing about the danger of EVM tampering, then what is the reason behind the insistence on using EVM, BJP should clarify this." Yadav also tagged the Musk's post and reiterated his party's demand that all future elections be conducted using ballot papers.

The opposition parties have been raising concerns over EVMs for some time now and have demanded a 100 per cent count of the VVPAT slips which was not allowed. ”

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday backed concerns raised by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on the EVMs claiming that in India, EVMs were a ‘black box’ that nobody is allowed to scrutinise, and asserted that "serious concerns" are being raised about transparency in the country's electoral process.

"Democracy ends up becoming a sham and prone to fraud when institutions lack accountability," Gandhi said in a post on X and tagged a media report which claimed that a relative of Shiv Sena's candidate, who won the polls from Mumbai's North-West seat by 48 votes, had a phone that unlocks an EVM.

The former Congress president also tagged a post by Tesla CEO Elon Musk in which he talked about eliminating EVMs. "We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high," Musk said in his recent post.

However, former Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar countered Musk's criticism of EVMs and said that the billionaire businessman's view may apply to the US and other places where they use regular computing platforms to build “Internet-connected voting machines.”

"But Indian EVMs are custom designed, secure and isolated from any network or media - No connectivity, no Bluetooth, wifi, Internet. ie there is no way in. Factory-programmed controllers that cannot be reprogrammed," Chandrasekhar said in a post on X.

"Electronic voting machines can be architected and built right as India has done. We would be happy to run a tutorial Elon," the BJP leader added. (with PTI inputs)