Elon Musk’s statement on elimination of EVMs turns political in India

Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) MP, and former Minister of State for Electronics and IT, Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Sunday came head on with American billionaire Elon Musk and said Musk’s statement on electronic voting machines (EVMs) “implies no one can build secure digital hardware.”

“This is a huge sweeping generalisation statement that implies no one can build secure digital hardware. Wrong...@elonmusk’s view may apply to US and other places - where they use regular compute platforms to build Internet connected voting machines,” Chandrasekhar said in a post on X, responding to Musk.

The statement was in reaction to a Musk’s post on X which read , “We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high.”

Chandrasekhar even explained that the Indian EVMs are custom designed, secure and isolated from any network or media.

“No connectivity, no bluetooth, wi-fi, Internet. i.e there is no way in. Factory-programmed controllers that cannot be reprogrammed. Electronic voting machines can be architected and built right as India has done. We would be happy to run a tutorial Elon,” Chandrasekhar said in a befitting reply.

• Also read: All you need to know about electronic voting machines

Credibility concerns

Musk’s statement turned political in India with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav also raising questions on credibility of the EVMs.

Gandhi said EVMs in India are a “black box” which nobody is allowed to scrutinise, and asserted that “serious concerns” are being raised about transparency in the country’s electoral process. “Democracy ends up becoming a sham and prone to fraud when institutions lack accountability,” Gandhi said in a post on X.

He also tagged a media report which claimed that a relative of Shiv Sena’s candidate, who won the polls from Mumbai’s North-West seat by 48 votes, had a phone that unlocks an EVM.

“Technology is meant to solve problems, if it becomes the cause of problems then its use should be stopped...Today, when fears of EVM tampering are being expressed in many elections of the world and the world’s renowned technology experts are openly writing about the danger of EVM tampering, then what is the reason behind the insistence on using EVM, BJP should clarify this,” Yadav said. He demanded that all future elections should be conducted through ballot papers.