BENGALURU: The state Congress has decided to rake up the controversy surrounding electronic voting machines (EVM), ahead of elections scheduled to be held this year in Karnataka. Priyank Kharge, Minister for Information Technology and Biotechnology, and Tourism has written to the Election Commission for an “open and inclusive” EVM challenge. He has also requested the EC to provide 250 randomly selected EVMs for the challenge.
In the letter, Kharge said, “...the large-scale use of EVMs over the years has also led many to doubt the technology and possibilities of it being hacked or compromised technically to benefit candidates of choice.”
“...I would like to propose hosting an EVM Challenge, jointly hosted by the Government of Karnataka and the EC, inviting important stakeholders of the scientific community like technocrats, scientists, corporates, R&D institutes, startups and tinkerers, and not just political parties to participate in testing EVMs for errors,” his letter addressed to Achal Kumar Jyothi, Chief Election Commissioner, read. “If there are technical flaws we can solve it together, and if there are no errors, we restore the people’s faith in our democratic process,” Kharge added.Kharge has been consistently demanding an EVM hackathon for the past one year after rumours surfaced of a possible compromise of these electronic machines.