WILLIAMNAGAR: Taking cognizance of a video that went viral on social media which purportedly showed that any button pressed on an EVM leads to a vote in favour of the BJP, East Garo Hills Deputy Commissioner Swapnil Tembe has issued a public notice asking people to refrain from circulating such misinformation.
On the allegations of EVMs being rigged, the East Garo Hills Deputy Commissioner said that it is ‘false and baseless’.
“The EVMs are highly secured machineries and they go through several checking procedures to ensure that no such incident occurs. They are built, repaired and always stored in secure locations,” said DC Tembe.
He further informed that while drafting the EVMs, four stages of checks are performed on the machines to rule out any errors as per the protocol set by the Election Commission of India (ECI).
“During the run-up to the elections, wide demonstrations on EVMs were done in all constituencies and in the marketplaces for people to experience the voting procedure. The microchips used in EVMs are one-time programmable or masked chips, which can neither be read nor overwritten. Hence, the program used in the EVMs cannot be reprogrammed in a particular manner,” he said.
The EVMs are stand-alone machines that are not accessible remotely from any network connected with any external device and there are no operating systems used in these machines, hence, there is no chance of programming the EVMs in a particular way to select any particular candidate or political party, the DC added.
The four stages of checks include removing defective machines from the stock after checking, randomization of machines multiple times through software during allocation to constituencies and polling stations, conducting of mock poles during commissioning, and conducting of mock poles on the EVMs in all polling stations one hour before the start of the poll to ascertain that no error or objection remains and all these stages of checks are done in presence of the representatives of political parties and the contesting candidates.
“The M3 EVM machines with unauthorized Access Detection Module (UADM), a protective circuit or feature embedded, are tamper proof and go into factory reset mode if any manipulation is attempted,” he added.
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The DC said penalties under relevant sections of law will be imposed on the person who circulates misinformation about the EVMs and will be booked under Section 171 G of the IPC.
The person who had spread misinformation regarding EVMs on social media has been identified and a case has been registered against him by the police station concerned, he added.
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