On Wednesday, 27th December, the infamous lawyer-cum-activist and a professional andolanjivi, Prashant Bhushan, shared an 11:11-minute-long video on X (formerly Twitter) claiming EVMs and VVPATs can be hacked. In a post in Hindi, Bhushan said, “See for yourself how EVMs and VVPAT machines can be tampered with. This can be done when the program is entered during symbol loading. That is why many countries, including Bangladesh, also went back to paper ballots. Earlier, BJP people also demanded a paper ballot. Now, why did it change after coming to power? Why was the glass of the VVPAT machine blackened?”
खुद देख लीजिए, किस तरह से, ई वी एम, और वीवीपेट मशीनों में छेड़छाड़ हो सकती है। सिंबल लोडिंग के समय जो प्रोग्राम डाला जाता है, उस समय, इस तरह से किया जा सकता है।
— Prashant Bhushan (@pbhushan1) December 27, 2023
इसीलिए ज्यादा देश और बांग्लादेश भी वापस पेपर वॉलेट की तरफ चले गये।
पहले भाजपा के लोग भी पेपर बैलट की मांग करते थे। अब… pic.twitter.com/s73wTu13kq
Prashant Bhushan shared the video of engineer Rahul Chimanbhai Mehta, founder and chief of the Gujarat-based Right to Recall Party. In the video, Mehta expressed concerns about Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails (VVPATs) being hackable. He claimed that VVPATs could be manipulated to show a particular candidate’s name but register a different candidate. To prove his theory, he used a “DO IT YOURSELF” VVPAT system that he made himself. Of course, he made it himself; after all, he is an engineer who returned from the US.
Anyway, using the dummy VVPAT, he showed how it could be manipulated using the ‘Banana-Apple’ theory that he has been talking about for years. Mehta claimed he was using the mock VVPAT because the Election Commission of India refused to give him a VVPAT machine to check. In the video, he claimed that the manufacturer of the VVPAT machine changed the glass from transparent to black in 2017 to facilitate the manipulation of votes. He further claimed that the black glass used on VVPAT can be used to manipulate what voters see and what happens in the background. All he “proved” using a mock VVPAT machine that he made, possibly in his garage, that it had nothing close to what actual VVPAT looks and works like.
The charlatan then moved a step forward and claimed that as there are transparent screens that can project content, even if the manufacturer rolls back to fine screens, they would not be 100 per cent unhackable. Mehta claimed that the software to manipulate voting could be done at the time of symbol loading, making tracking impossible. He then called for rolling back to ballot papers.
As the Lok Sabha Elections 2024 approach, the opposition parties have started crying foul over EVMs. Almost every other party and leader wants to go back to the ballot paper. Either they have forgotten or think the voters have forgotten the mess ballot papers created during voting.
Booth capturing, fake voting and riots were common in India earlier. Who can forget what recently happened during the Panchayat Elections in West Bengal, where ballot papers were used. Despite all the problems that ballot papers have created in the past, the political parties want to roll back to it. Interestingly, some may think capturing booths would be easier than winning voters’ hearts.
Interestingly, Prashant Bhushan is not the only one who shared Mehta’s bizarre video to raise his voice against EVMs and VVPATs. A courtesy search on social media showed that several X users shared the video in the past 24 hours. Congress leader Vikas Bansal shared the video and claimed EVM and VVPAT machines can be hacked.
Founder of The Pillania, journalist Amandeep Pillania, shared the video crediting Prashant Bhushan.
Shree Raghuveer shared the video and tagged several Congress leaders, including Rahul Gandhi and Digvijay Singh.
Now, the question is if Mehta is claiming this for the first time or if he is a habitual fearmonger. Well, let’s go with the latter and have a look at his history. Mehta is an IIT Delhi graduate and a self-proclaimed anti-corruption activist. He worked as a software engineer in the US for some time and came back to India in 1999. In 2018, he formed a political party named the ‘Right To Recall Party’ and contested the Lok Sabha Elections in 2019 on 14 seats.
All the candidates who fought the election under the RTRP banner lost their deposits. The 14 candidates covered eight states: Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, and Delhi. The party received a total of 28,817 votes, out of which 13,140 votes were secured by Pawan Kumar Sharma, who contested the election from Bhilwara, Rajasthan. The remaining votes were scattered across other candidates, with Mehta securing only 1097 votes. He contested from Gandhinagar.
In 2013, VVPATs were first introduced for the single constituency in Nagaland. Later, in 2017, ECI announced that it would use VVPATs for all elections. Since then, Mehta has been claiming that VVPATs can be hacked. A video on the matter was published on his YouTube channel in 2017, where he called VVPATs ‘timewaste’. In the video, he claimed the CIA was pressuring the Election Commission of India to continue using EVM machines and emphasised the return of ballot papers.
The real drama came in April 2019 when he published a video of the famous “Banana-Apple” theory. However, as it was only hypothetical, he did not get much attention.
By August, he had created his first mock VVPAT Machine to explain his “Banana-apple” theory. His first mock VVPAT had roughly cut cardboard pieces. Please note that we are not mocking the effort at all. This is just for the information.
In October 2019, Mehta even gave a newspaper ad describing his ‘Banana-Apple’ theory. The Editor of Scroll, Naresh Fernandes, shared it on social media.
Ad in today’s Express issued by Mr Rahul Mehta about bananas and apples and VVPATs. pic.twitter.com/MZ8siAioUz
— naresh fernandes (@tajmahalfoxtrot) October 26, 2019
By April 2023, he was ready with a better mock replica of VVPAT that looked much better than the cardboard. This is the same machine in the video Prashant Bhushan and others shared.
A similar fearmongering about VVPATs was created by former IAS officer Kannan Gopinath in 2019 in a thread on X (formerly Twitter).
So, you might remember my spirited defense of EVMs. I still stand by it, except that my first election with VVPAT has taken away my trust. VVPAT has created a hole in the EVM armor & made the process amenable to hacking @DrSYQuraishi @AshokLavasa @ECISVEEP https://t.co/uKdu7AfBee
— Kannan Gopinathan (@naukarshah) September 24, 2019
Opposition crying ‘EVM Hatao Democracy Bachao’, again…
These activists are not the only ones who are demanding to remove EVMs or creating an atmosphere of fear of rigging around them. On 19th December, I.N.D.I Alliance parties tabled a resolution on EVMs demanding the slips should not fall in the box automatically but should be handed over to the voters so that they can put them in the ballot boxes. Further, they demanded 100% counting of VVPAT slips. “This will restore full confidence of the people in free and fair elections”, the resolution read. It is interesting to see Congress did not cry foul in Telangana, where they won the Assembly elections.
Sharing the Resolution of the INDIA parties on EVMs
— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) December 19, 2023
ये है EVM पर इंडिया की पार्टियों द्वारा पारित किया गया प्रस्ताव। pic.twitter.com/R6E944ksbY
On 26th December, Congress’s Sam Pitroda also claimed elections can be rigged using EVMs and VVPATs.
#WATCH | On the EVM issue raised by opposition leaders & possibility of voting machines being rigged, Chairman Indian Overseas Congress, Sam Pitroda says, "The answer is yes, mainly because of VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail) is introduced, attached, working and it… pic.twitter.com/2dxSSNBBVK
— ANI (@ANI) December 26, 2023
EVMs and VVPATs are safe
Despite all the claims, it has to be noted that EVMs and VVPATs are safe and cannot be manipulated. Interestingly, no one came forward when ECI organised a hackathon and challenged everyone to hack EVM machines.
Notably, VVPATs and EVMs are stand-alone machines. They are not connected to the internet. It significantly nullifies the chances of remote hacking. Furthermore, VVPATs provide a paper trail for each vote. The voters can verify it at the time of the elections and again after the election. All ballots are time-stamped, and all voting booths are under CCTV surveillance, making it impossible to manipulate the votes.
Regarding the technicalities, EVMs and VVPATs run on Application Specific Integrated Circuits or ASICs. These are different from general-purpose computers and resistant to hacking via malware. These ICs are not reprogrammable, which means the code they run cannot be altered. Furthermore, there is no possibility of a Trojan Horse attack either. No subsequent key presses will be recorded once a ballot key is pressed until a new ballot is enabled. It prevents any malicious signal injection. The latest models of EVM machines have temper detections that render the EVM machines inoperative if there is a temper attempt.
In short, all the ‘hallabol‘ around EVMs and VVPATs is nothing more than fearmongering and should be seen as pre-poll acceptance of defeat.
