DBT Bureau
Bengaluru, 16 June 2024
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk created an intense debate in the Indian political system after his post in social media platform X advocated the complete elimination of EVMs from elections.
According to Musk, there exists a risk of hacking in electronic voting machines.
“We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high,” wrote Musk in his X post earlier.
This has created a political furore in India with opposition leaders and ruling party members entering into a spat. It has been a long-standing demand of opposition parties led by the Congress party to replace the current EVM-based voting system with paper-based voting.
Reacting to Elon Musk’s post on X, BJP leader Rajeev Chandrashekhar countered Musk’s arguments about hacking possibility. He explained how Indian EVMs, unlike those used in other countries like the US, are custom designed, secure, and isolated from any network or media. In his post on X, Chandrashekhar called Elon Musk’s statement on EVMs as ‘generalised’ and expressed the possibility of building secure digital hardware for EVMs.
“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,” wrote Chandrashekhar in his post. Elon Musk also responded to the post and commented “Anything can be hacked”.
Meanwhile, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has joined the EVM hacking debate terming the Indian EVM as a black box. “EVMs in India are a “black box,” and nobody is allowed to scrutinize them. Serious concerns are being raised about transparency in our electoral process,” Rahul Gandhi wrote on X.
“Democracy ends up becoming a sham and prone to fraud when institutions lack accountability,” he added, posting a snippet of the news report about controversies relating to EVMs in Mumbai North West Lok Sabha seat.
