Tesla CEO Elon Musk's statement on Saturday calling for elimination of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) due to the high risk of them being hacked, was strongly countered by former Union Minister of State for Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar who on Sunday called Musk’s take a “huge sweeping generalisation” which holds no truth.
The tech mogul, however, doubled down and replied with "Anything can be hacked" to the former minister's reaction. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi also had his say on Musk's post, as he called EVMs in India a "black box" which nobody is allowed to scrutinise, and asserted that "serious concerns" are being raised about transparency in India's electoral process.
"We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high," Musk wrote in his post on X, reacting to Puerto Rico’s primary elections which allegedly experienced voting irregularities.
Responding to the tech billionaire’s post, Chandrasekhar said this was not the case at all, and even invited the Tesla CEO to come and learn some lessons in India.
“This is a huge sweeping generalisation statement that implies no one can build secure digital hardware. Wrong,” replied the former MoS IT. According to Chandrasekhar, Musk’s view may apply to the US and other places where they use regular computing platforms to build “Internet-connected Voting machines.”
Chandrasekhar further rejected Musk’s statement, saying that Indian EVMs are custom-designed, secure and isolated from any network or media. “No connectivity, no bluetooth, wifi, Internet; there is no way in. Factory-programmed controllers that cannot be reprogrammed,” informed the former minister. “Electronic voting machines can be architected and built right as India has done. We would be happy to run a tutorial, Elon,” Chandrasekhar added.
Reacting to Chandrasekhar's comment, Musk wrote "anything can be hacked", to which the former minister said: "Technically ur right - anything is possible E.g..wth quantum compute, i can decrypt any level of encryption, with lab level tech n plenty of resources, i can hack any digital hardware/system incldng flight controls of a glass cockpit of a jet etc etc. But thats a different type of a conversatn from EVMs being secure n reliable vis a vis paper voting. And we can agree to disagree," the former MoS IT said in his post.
At this, National president of Indian Youth Congress Srinivas BV questioned Chandrasekhar, asking him if "anything is possible then why can't Indian EVMs be hacked".
"According to BJP leader @RajeevRC_X, if "anything is possible," then anything can be hacked. So, why can't Indian EVMs be hacked? Are they protected by God? Or our own paramaatma ka avataar?" the Congress leader wrote.
As for Rahul Gandhi, he, while reacting to Musk, called EVMs in India a "black box", and posted an image of a news article which claimed that a relative of Shiv Sena's candidate, who won the polls from Mumbai's north west by 48 votes, had a phone that unlocks an EVM.
"EVMs in India are a "black box," and nobody is allowed to scrutinize them. Serious concerns are being raised about transparency in our electoral process. Democracy ends up becoming a sham and prone to fraud when institutions lack accountability," Rahul wrote in his post.
The news report revealed that the accused in question, Mangesh Pandilkar, is a relative of Mumbai North West MP Ravindra Waikar, who belongs to the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena. Citing police officials, the news report said that the phone can be used to generate a one-time password (OTP) to unlock an EVM machine, and was used on June 4 inside the NESCO Centre.
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