Bengaluru: Karnataka IT Minister Priyank Kharge has thrown a challenge at the Central Government, offering to host an EVM-hackathon in Bengaluru to dispel doubts on whether the machines are fool-proof.
Kharge, who is Minister for IT, BT and Tourism, had two days back, asked the government to "Why not let Bengaluru start-ups have a go at it."
Priyank, the son of Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge, was responding on social media to reports where the Central government, and in particular Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, rubbished reports that EVMs could be tampered with.
Prasad, in a debate in the Rajya Sabha on electoral reforms, had said EVMs are tamper-proof and that the Centre would further strengthen their veracity by allowing a paper trail for votes.
Weighing in on the EVM debate, Kharge junior told Prasad that the best way to put doubts at rest would be to organise an EVM-Hackathon, further offering to host one in the country's start-up capital Bengaluru as it would be good to see disruption, if any, as part of ethical hacking.
"After the UP elections there is a lot of talk about the EVMs. After all, it's a machine... Scientific temper always teaches you that you should doubt, so if there is a doubt in the technology and there is nothing wrong in having an ethical hackathon. So the idea is to ensure that this kind of doubts is laid to rest," Priyank Kharge told News18.
He said his offer has no connection with claims raised by parties like BSP and AAP that EVMs were rigged in the recent Assembly elections.
"We have a very vibrant startup ecosystem here in Bengaluru. So I have just replied to what honourable minister Mr. Prasad said, that it cannot be hacked or it cannot be at fault. So I am just asking the right question, of saying that can we have a ethical hackathon and see if these EVMs can actually be hacked or not," Kharge said.
While saying this is not a 'challenge,' that he is merely reacting to what is happening in general, Kharge said his team has also, parallelly, written to the Election Commission and the Public Sector Units that manufactures EVMs to see whether they can get a machine that can be put to test through the city's tech wizards.
"The idea is very simple. We need to keep the trust in the EVMs. And in order to have that, it needs to be challenged, because at the end of the day people are putting their entire future on this machine. So we need to figure out whether this machine is good enough for us or not. I have complete trust in technology, being the IT minister, but if somebody doubts that technology, as a minister, it is also my responsibility to clear the air," Kharge said, pointing out that in the biggest democracy in the world, when 1.6 billion people are choosing their elected representatives through this machine, there is nothing wrong in evaluating how proficient the machines are.
Kharge's offer comes on a day when the Supreme Court began hearing a Public Interest Litigation on alleged tampering of the software in EVMs. A division bench of the apex court has sought the Election Commission's response to the PIL, that also seeks an investigation by software experts into this.
There have been loud accusations by Opposition parties of EVM tampering in the recently-concluded Uttar Pradesh elections, apart from questions being raised on why the Centre has not fully funded a paper trail for voting by machines, that was ordered by the SC a few years ago.
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