New Delhi, Oct 23 (IANS) The Election Commission Friday stoutly defended the Electronic Voting Machines, saying none of those criticising the reliability of the machines had been able to prove that they could be tampered with.
“We are completely satisfied with the EVMS, but if anybody wants to come and demonstrate otherwise, they are welcome,” Chief Election Commissioner Navin Chawla told reporters.

The Bharatiya Janata Party vice-president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi had Thursday termed the EVMS as “electronic victory machines” for the Congress. However, party general secretary Vijay Goel contradicted him to say, “The party has never said that it is losing because of EVMs.”

Chawla pointed out that the issue of tampering of EVMs had come up twice in both the high court and Supreme Court, where none of the petitioners had been able to demonstrate their allegations.

“We had even given 100 EMS for them to show their proof,” he said.

A case is currently in a high court on the tampering of EVMs filed by Janata Party leader Subramaniam Swamy.

The CEC said that in Latur, an independent candidate had once claimed that a trojan horse, a hidden programme, will be activated if counting was done from the EVMs four times. “It took a long time, but we did the counting four times. But, no trojan horse was activated,” he said.