Musk’s claim on EVM hack, black box for Rahul Gandhi, know the important things related to this issue in 10 points

New Delhi: 12 days after the Lok Sabha election results, once again the debate on the credibility of EVMs has started. First, Tesla owner Elon Musk talked about removing it. After this, Rahul Gandhi, in his/her ex-post, referred to Mid Day’s news and called it a black box. After Rahul’s ex-post, BJP also became active. Former Union Minister Rajiv Chandrashekhar and BJP spokesperson Shahzad Poonawala gave a piece of their mind to both Elon Musk and Rahul Gandhi. Rajiv Chandrashekhar even challenged Musk to come to India and show a demo of EVM hacking. In the middle of the debate, at night, the election officer replied to both the opposition and Musk on the allegation of hacking of electronic voting machines in Mumbai North West Lok Sabha seat. Let us understand the whole thing in 10 points, what happened on the issue of hacking of EVMs in the last 24 hours.What did Mid-Day claim?
A Mid-Day report claimed that Mangesh Pandilkar, Ravindra Waikar’s brother-in-law, used a mobile phone to “unlock” an EVM during vote counting, allegations that were rejected by election officer Vandana Suryavanshi and the Mumbai police. Mangesh Pandilkar and a polling officer Dinesh Gurav have been booked by the Vanrai police under Section 188 of the Indian Penal Code for violating the Election Commission’s ban on mobile phones inside counting centres.

Understand the whole thing in 10 points
1. Rahul Gandhi Sharing a clipping of Mid Day newspaper from his/her X handle, he/she called EVM a ‘black box’. he/she said that serious concerns are being raised about the transparency in the country’s electoral process. he/she said that EVM in India is a ‘black box’ and no one is allowed to examine it. Serious concerns are being raised about the transparency in our electoral process. When there is a lack of accountability in institutions, democracy becomes a sham and becomes a victim of fraud.

2. Senior Congress leader and former Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan Said that the election result of Mumbai North West Lok Sabha seat should be stayed. he/she demanded that the Election Commission should call a meeting of all the parties and discuss the issue in detail. he/she said that unauthorized use of mobile phones should also be investigated. Prithviraj Chavan said that the FIR report has not been made public.

3. NCP (Sharad faction) spokesperson Clyde Crasto said that access of a relative of Ravindra Waikar to the mobile phone of an EC official is a matter of concern. Crasto said that the EC polling officer has stated that the OTP is required only for data entry of the counting process, which means that the creation of this OTP can also give Waikar’s relatives access to the data, and it can be manipulated by them or their team. This is very serious. The ECI needs to clarify what happened when the phone was with Waikar’s team.

4. Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aditya Thackeray said that the ECI does not have the courage to release the CCTV camera footage related to the seat. he/she said that we have always suspected that this government has tampered with the EVMs. Even Elon Musk has expressed his/her views and claimed that everything can be hacked. Despite several requests, the Election Commission does not have the courage to release the CCTV footage of the counting day which will support our claims.

5. Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi wrote that why did it take ten days to file an FIR? Mumbai police has not denied this story yet? Why is the CCTV footage not being shared with the police or the candidates who asked for it? Why was the phone of the EC data entry operator found with the candidate’s relative? Madam R.O. herself has said that OTP was received on that phone for entering the Encore portal (EC data portal).

6. Kapil Sibal, Rajya Sabha MP refused to comment on EVMs. he/she said that this is a big issue. Sibal took a dig at the Supreme Court’s decision on EVMs. he/she said that when the Supreme Court of India said that we should trust our machines, and we should trust the Election Commission of India, if the Supreme Court itself is trusting them, then why should I comment on them? If we start trusting the government and machines, then all the work should be done through machines. Then why are there courts? If we start trusting the government, then what is the use of giving a decision? This is a big issue, I will comment on it later.

7. Congress ally and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav Akhilesh Yadav also questioned the credibility of EVMs and demanded that all future elections should be conducted through ballot papers. he/she said, ‘Technology is meant to solve problems, if it causes problems then its use should be stopped. 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 the BJP should clarify what is the reason behind insisting on the use of EVMs. Akhilesh Yadav posted that we reiterate our demand that all future elections should be conducted using ballot papers.

8. Meanwhile, Billionaire Entrepreneur Elon Musk called for the abolition of EVMs. In a recent post on X, Elon Musk said,
‘We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The threat of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too great.’

9. Former Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar has strongly opposed Elon Musk’s criticism of EVMs. Rajiv Chandrasekhar said that it is a very broad generalisation. The Tesla chief responded that anything can be hacked. Chandrasekhar, a former Minister of State for Electronics and IT, argued that this implies that no one can build secure digital hardware. This is wrong. he/she further said that such an approach can be applied in the US and other places-where they use regular computation platforms to build internet-connected voting machines. Indian EVMs are secure and isolated from any network.

10. BJP spokesperson Shehzad Poonawala said that Rahul Gandhi, who talks of black box, wants to hide his/her black deeds and therefore, he/she wants to use half-baked stories to spread his/her lies and fraud. he/she said, “To hide the black deeds of Karnataka, where the price of diesel and petrol has been increased, he/she is using a fake story and spreading half truths and complete lies. Rahul Gandhi has pushed a story that says OTP is required to unlock EVMs. Many others in his/her ecosystem have also said so. The Election Commission has come out and clarified that no OTP is required to ‘unlock’, EVMs are stand-alone machines. They are like calculators. There is no network connectivity, so there is no question of it being hacked.