EVMs get a clean chit from its developers

New Delhi, January 23: Clearing the falsehood statement about the malfunctions of the EVM machines spread by the self-claimed, so called cyber expert Sayed Shuja, the Technical Experts Committee (TEC) members have reconfirmed to the Election Commission of India that the ECI-EVMs are not tamperable. “While ECI-EVMs might malfunction sometimes like any other machine due to component failures and stop working, but even such a malfunctioning ECI-EVM would not record any vote incorrectly”, said the team backing the ECI’s step of lodging FIR against the allegation.

 

The Technical Experts Committee members constitute Delhi’s Prof D T Shahani and Prof Rajat Moona, Bhilai and Prof D K Sharma, Prof Emeritus from Mumbai, saying that the ECI-EVM are stand-alone machines designed to connect only amongst ECI-EVM units through cables that remain in full public view.

 

There is no mechanism in ECI-EVMs to communicate with any device through wireless communication on any Radio Frequency. All versions of ECI-EVMs are regularly and rigorously tested against low to high wireless frequencies. These tests include and go beyond the standard tests specified for electronic equipments, it added further.

 

The EVM machines are regularly tested for proper functioning under all kind of operating conditions, code authentication and verification. Further stressing at Shuja’s allegations about the two side printing of VVAPT paper, the team cleared that VVPATs use thermal printers which can print only on one side of thermal paper. The print is fully visible through the viewing window. The paper rolls used in VVPATs have only one-sided thermal coating and hence can be printed only on one side. The VVPAT paper print lasts at least for five years, it cleared.

 

Meanwhile, the Chief Managing Directors of Bharat Electronics Limited and Electronics Corporation of India Limited, who are the sole manufacturers of EVMs and now also VVPATs, also reaffirmed that all the TEC prescribed Standard Operating Procedures are scrupulously adhered to and observed.