Pune: Amid the opposition clamour against the efficacy of EVMs following the assembly poll results, former CM Prithviraj Chavan has said the burden of proof lies with EC and it will have to establish that these machines cannot be tampered with.
In an interaction with TOI, the Congress politician said candidates or experts can’t offer evidence unless they physically test EVMs. “The poll panel should allow international technical experts to check if there is any malware in the machines.”
He said MVA’s disastrous performance in the state polls was unexpected, particularly after the LS election when it got 65% of seats against Mahayuti’s 35%. “In the four months between the parliamentary and assembly poll results, there was some impact of the Ladki Bahin scheme. Besides, there was extensive use of govt agencies and money by Mahayuti.”
Chavan said a post-poll analysis found there was no anti-MVA wave but Congress won only 16 seats, its lowest tally in the state. “NCP (SP) had the highest strike rate in the LS poll, but it managed to bag only 10 assembly seats of the 80-odd it contested. We could not figure out the reason for the defeat of some candidates, including mine and Balasaheb Thorat’s, and the dip in the victory margins of Jayant Patil and Vishwajeet Kadam. They raise the question if the EVMs were tampered with,” he said, adding some civil society sections have also raised doubts over their functioning.
Reacting to a clip of his remarks that EVMs cannot be hacked, which has now gone viral, he clarified it was part of an interview he had given in 2019 and his statements were selectively culled out of context. “I have tried to explain the difference between hacking and tampering. Hacking is when EVMs are stored in a godown and somebody remotely accesses them and alters the result by sending signals. It is not possible as there is no transmitter and receiver chip inside the EVM to send or receive signals. So, I feel these machines can be tampered with by inserting some malware to get the desired results,” he said.
Chavan suggested an alternative way to verify poll results by counting all VVPAT slips. “It will not change the poll outcome, but EC has an opportunity to put the controversy to rest.” Strongly vouching for ballot paper as a better option, he said the evidence of voting can be kept for a longer period of time. Despite MVA’s misgivings over EVMs, it will not approach SC to bring back ballot paper in future, said Chavan.
