Bhubaneswar, Aug 2 (IANS) An electronic experts group Saturday challenged the poll panel’s claim that the electronic voting machines (EVM) are tamper proof, and said the voting devices can be tampered with in many ways.
Claiming that there are loopholes in the EVMs, the expert team here demonstrated how the machines can be tampered through a prototype EVM they have developed.

“EVMs have many loopholes. We are challenging those who claim that EVMs are infallible. There are many security leakages in these machines which can give us a manipulated result,” said Hari K. Prasad, a Hyderabad based electronics expert and head of Net India Pvt Ltd.

The claim by the electronic expert group comes a day after the Election Commission Saturday maintained that the EVMs were “fully tamper-proof” and invited political parties and others who had raised doubts about the credibility of the machines to come for a demonstration to set their misgivings at rest “once and for all”.

About 1.3 million EVMs were used during the April-May Lok Sabha polls. Of these, 400,000 were new.

“Leave apart the old EVMs, the upgraded machines are not fully tamper proof,” Prasad told a gathering.

The group was accompanied by the Hyderabad-based NGO, Jana Chetana Vedika, which had earlier filed a PIL in the Supreme Court challenging the infallibility of EVMs.

The group is making another demonstration to nail the poll panel’s claims next week before a technical experts team.

Prasad said mechanisms like printing a confirmation paper slip after voting, like in credit cards, would make the process more credible.