Just after the election results of 5 States were out, the Bahujan Samajwadi Party Supremo Mayawati alleged that the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) have been tampered with, otherwise this result in Uttar Pradesh elections is not at all possible.

After that, the New Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal also expressed his doubt about EVMs and ordered that the MCD elections should be conducted on ballot paper rather than on EVMs. However, as per the Chief Election Commissioner Sanjay Srivastava, it is not possible to tamper with EVMs. Moreover, he has also written his answer regarding this matter to the Delhi Government.

EVMs are not connected to Internet, so they cannot be hacked online. The Chief Election Commissioner has written to the Delhi Government that they need to change the rules themselves if they want to conduct elections with ballet paper. Besides, it will also take a lot of time in printing ballet paper and arranging ballet boxes.

Political parties don’t know about EVM allotment: In order to decide which EVM will be allotted to which booth, first Lok Sabha area, then Vidhan Sabha area and finally, the booth is finalised. Polling party gets to know about the EVM it is getting at the time of dispatching only.

Three EVM units ensure credibility: EVM has two machines, ballot and control, and presently the third unit known as VVPAT is also included in the EVM, which shows a paper to the voter after which the voter can be certain that his/her vote has been cast correctly.

EVM mock polling: EVMs are checked before voting and even a mock polling exercise is also done by the polling party in front of the polling agents of all the candidates. After the mock polling, the polling agents give certificate of correct mock poll to the incharge of polling booth. Not only this, there are signatures of polling agents on the machines which can be checked by the agents at the time of counting.

No proof of EVM tampering: Some cases of EVM tampering have been presented in the Supreme Court; however, nothing has been proved.

According to the Election Commission of India (ECI), till date 107 elections to States    and three Parliamentary polls have been smoothly conducted using the EVMs.