Hyderabad based technical researcher, Hari Prasad, who has carried out research on Indian electronic voting machines (EVM), has said that he will continue his fight against the claims made by Election Commission of India (ECI) that the EVM are tamper proof.
Mr. Prasad has co-authored a page on Indian electronic voting machines with a researcher from the US and one from the Netherlands and claims that EVMs used in the country can be tampered by interested parties to change the results in an election.
He was arrested on August 21 on charges of stealing EVM with serial number E-131812 from Old Custom House in Mumbai. He surrendered to a team of Mumbai Police in Hyderabad to register his protest against the system. He was taken to Mumbai and was questioned about the person who provided the device used in a research paper published in April showing that the machines was not tamper proof.
Mr. Prasad, who is the managing director of NetIndia Pvt Ltd and also works as the technical coordinator of VeTA (Citizens for Verifiability, Transparency and Accountability in Elections), has been booked under IPC sections 454,
457 and 380 for housebreaking and theft. The police is still searching for the machine which Prasad says he has returned to a government official back in April.
He has been released after metropolitan court magistrate hearing the case expressed that that no offence is associated with Mr. Prasad and even if the court assumes that the EVM was stolen, it was not meant for any dishonest motives.
Speaking at a media conference along with Jana Chaitanya Vedika members he said, "someone came to me and asked me to show how an EVM could be tampered with."
He also claimed he returned the machine after showing that it can be tampered this was filmed and showed on a local TV channel.
He also cleared that he showed the EVM deliberately on Tv so as to prove that it can be tampered with while the ECI had claimed that its EVMs are completely tamper proof.
He indicated that ECI should stop backing the Electronics Corporation of India (ECIL), the manufacturer of EVMs and evaluate the flaws in the manchines. "I am unfazed and instead I am more inspired to continue the battle against the vulnerablilty of EVMs and will be in continuous touch with the ECI," he said.
Chief Election Commissioner S Y Quraishi has responded by saying that EVM technology is continuously changed both technologically and administratively in order to keep malpractices or manipulation away.
Mr. Quraishi affirmed that the machines have gone under significant improvements since their launch in 1982 and a technical experts committee approves changes made in the machines.
