'EVM' used in Delhi Assembly to show 'tampering' was created by AAP MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj's team

NEW DELHI: Aam Aadmi Party MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj, who gave a point-by-point 'demonstration' on ways to rig an 'electronic voting machine', on Wednesday accepted the 'EVM' he used inside Delhi Assembly was created by his own team. "It was a replica of Election Commission's voting machines created by our team which includes people from IT field," he said. "BEL and ECIL, manufacturers of EVMs in India, don't have any in-house mechanism to create EVMs. These firms don't even rank in top 500 IT companies. The technology they use is outsourced and the chips of EVMs are bought from other countries," he claimed. "Firms that sell chips to these companies manufacture microprocessors for others too. If BEL and ECIL can buy microcontrollers from those firms, others too can purchase them and create machines by using the same technology to prove they that can be rigged," he said. He claimed that 'secret codes' embedded inside the voting machines can be used to manipulate election results. "Those who install software in these machines for purpose of hacking create these secret codes," he said. The AAP MLA on Tuesday gave a 'demonstration' inside Delhi Assembly how an EVM can be tampered. Bhardwaj, who was a software engineer before joining politics, said it takes "90 seconds" to change the motherboard of EVMs and that all votes can be polled in favour of a particular political party. "If elections continue to be done through these EVMs there will be no measure of democracy left. Only 1 party will rule," Saurabh Bhardwaj had said in Delhi Assembly. The had dismissed Bharadwaj's assertions. "It is common sense that gadgets other than ECI-EVMs can be programmed to perform in a pre-determined way, but it simply cannot be implied that ECI-EVMs will behave in the same manner because they are technically secured and function under an elaborate administrative and security protocol," the Commission had said in a statement. BJP called the hack "demonstration" a "drama". After Punjab Assembly elections, Kejriwal alleged EVM tampering while after debacle in UP elections BSP leader Mayawati, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav had also raised question about the polling machines. (With inputs from agencies)