EVM row: Why is Election Commission running away from open hackathon, asks AAP

A day after the Election Commission rejected its demands, the Aam Aadmi Party has decided to stay away from the electronic voting machine (EVM) tampering challenge thrown by the poll panel.

The AAP has decided not to apply for the EVM tampering challenge from June 3.

Incidentally, no political party has applied to take part in the EVM tampering challenge of the Election Commission.

The TMC, another party that raised doubts over the reliability of the EVM, sought more time to decided about its participation in the challenge. But, the Election Commission is learnt to have rejected the TMC's request.

The Election Commission yesterday rejected the demand of the AAP to allow it to tamper with the motherboard of the machine during the EVM challenge.

The Election Commission on Thursday rejected the demand of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to allow it to tamper with the motherboard of the electronic voting machines during the EVM challenge.

In a point-wise rebuttal



of the allegations leveled by the AAP, the Election Commission said that the EVM would lose its originality if changes were made to its internal circuit.

The AAP had asked the Election Commission not to conduct the EVM challenge under a set of guidelines. The AAP had argued that the person, who might tamper with the EVM, would not go by the rule-book.

The AAP has raised doubts over reliability of EVMs for casting and recording votes during elections. The matter was first raised by BSP chief Mayawati, who alleged after the UP Assembly election that the BJP tampered with the EVMs.

The AAP led an aggressive campaign against EVM after Bhind incident where the voting machine was reported to have behaved 'erroneously'.

But, the Election Commission has maintained that the EVMs owned and maintained by the poll panel are tamper-proof. The Election Commission has resisted all the attempts to go back to ballot paper system of conducting polls.