NEW DELHI: THE Uttarakhand High Court on Friday dismissed a petition challenging the constitutionality of the Election Commission’s (EC’s) Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) challenge to be held on Saturday, saying there is no scope to doubt the fair working of the voting machines.
Rejecting a PIL filed by a state Congress leader challenging the constitutional correctness of the EC move, a division bench of justices Rajeev Sharma and Sharad Sharma gave the green signal to the EVM challenge.
Allowing the EC to go forward with the EVM challenge, the court instructed that as a form of greater good of the public, all national, state and other political parties, electronic media, press, radio, social media, and other platforms have been barred from criticising the use of EVMs in the recent state Assembly elections until the decision of election-related petitions are pending in the court of law.
As there is no scope to doubt the fair working of the EVMs and hence, the organisation of a demonstration/challenge on Saturday must be left to the discretion of the Election Commission at best, the court said.
A total of 14 EVMs will be made available to the representatives of political parties between 10 am—2 pm, to prove that the machines used in the state polls were manipulated.
The challenge will have two parts. In the first part, the hackers will be asked to prove that EVMs used during elections in the five states, were manipulated. Thereafter, hackers will be given opportunity to prove that the machines used in the Assembly polls were manipulated. Moreover, if the machine stops functioning during the process, the candidate will be considered failed, said EC officials.