AAP MLA Saurabh Bharadwaj became the latest Opposition leader to threaten Election Commission with violence, ‘mass riots, civil war’ in this case
Yesterday, Election Commission refused to succumb to Opposition pressure to change the established vote counting procedure, following which Bharadwaj made his threat on twitter –
Bharadwaj represents Greater Kailash constituency in the Delhi State Legislature and has two graduate degrees – he is a Computer Science Engineer and Bachelor of Law.
Two years back, the MLA had alleged in the Delhi Assembly that EVMs can be tampered with using a certain ‘secret code’, and had given a step-by-step demonstration of how the ‘hacking’ can be done. However, he accepted that the EVM machine used by him was not the same machine used in polling, but something ‘similar’. He claimed that in case of the EVMs used by Election Commission, only its ‘mother board’ has to be replaced to feed the secret code.
Election Commission rejected the hacking attempt by Bhardwaj stating that it cannot take responsibility of any machine that is not under its own security systems.
The propaganda of EVMs being hacked has been kept alive by vested interests, despite several election authorities and experts comprehensively explaining how the process of voting through EVM has so many checks and balances that the chances of manipulating machine and influencing outcome is ZERO.
In the video below, Prof Dinesh Sharma of IIT Bombay, who also serves on the technical expert committee of the Election Commission of India, explains Indian EVMs and their secure functioning:
The truth is that the era of paper ballots from 1952-1998 routinely saw booth capturing and foul-play in certain pockets of states like Bihar, UP etc, leading to mostly pro-incumbent verdicts.
And this is what happened last year in West Bengal Panchayat elections, where paper ballots are still used –
Here's why those who cannot win a free and fair election conducted through #EVMs want ballot papers and ballot boxes back. Please share freely so people of #India know the truth since doormat #media won't tell this story.
(Pix of #WestBengal panchayat polls in May 2018.) pic.twitter.com/83jy4RBKKg— Kanchan Gupta 🇮🇳 (@KanchanGupta) May 21, 2019
Stung by the likelihood of another 5 years out of power and consumed with visceral Modi hatred, the Opposition is willing to destroy the credibility of the Election Commission, as R Jagannathan writes.
The Union Home Ministry has issued an advisory to all States and Union Territories alerting them to the possibility of violence in some parts of the country, particularly in UP, West Bengal, Bihar and Tripura, where some organisations and individuals have given statements which may lead to violence and disruption in counting process.
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