The Election Commission on Wednesday dismissed apprehensions expressed by Aam Admi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal that certain electronic voting machines had been “tampered” with to favour the BJP in the Assembly polls.
EC officials with whom Mr. Kejriwal met on Wednesday afternoon said they had explained that the machines that Mr. Kejriwal was referring to were the latest versions in which the software could not be tampered with.
Mr. Kejriwal had alleged on Tuesday that during an inspection in the Delhi Cantonment area, four machines were found doctored in a way that the result always showed the BJP, no matter what party the voters chose. AAP leaders had also approached the poll body last week to find out what was the procedure if a voter found such a discrepancy in an EVM.
“Large scale EVM tampering? Yest, during inspection of EVMs in Del cant, in 4 machines, whatever button u pressed, light against BJP lit (sic),” said his tweet. “We urge CEC to allow us to put a banner outside each booth educating voters abt EVMs (sic),” he said in another tweet on Wednesday morning.
EC officials told Mr Kejriwal that the EVMs and control units pass through several stages of checks before being finally used for actual voting. The faults found on the machines, they said, were mechanical in nature and had been fixed.
“The Election Commission has cleared all our doubts about the EVM machine issue. They said that EVMs used are latest and tamper-proof. They are all double checked,” Mr. Kejriwal later told reporters.
