Amid raging debate over Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) after Tesla chief Elon Musk called for their elimination, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday called the voting machines a “black box” that can’t be scrutinised.
In a social media post on ‘X’, the Gandhi scion said, “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.”
His remarks came in the backdrop of a social media debate following Musk’s remarks.
On Saturday, the Tesla chief had called for elimination of EVMs, saying they were prone to hacking by humans and Artificial Intelligence.
“We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high,” Musk said.
Former Union Minister and BJP leader Rajeev Chandrashekhar was quick to counter Musk’s apprehensions on EVMs and asserted that the voting machines that are built in India can’t be hacked.
Moreover, the BJP leader also offered to run a tutorial for the Tesla chief on how to build EVMs correctly.
“Elon Musk’s view may apply to US and other places – where they use regular compute platforms to build Internet connected Voting machines…Indian EVMs are custom designed, secure and isolated from any network or media – No connectivity, no bluetooth, wifi, Internet. ie there is no way in. Factory programmed controllers that cannot be reprogrammed. Electronic voting machines can be architected and built right as India has done. We would be happy to run a tutorial, Elon,” Chandrashekhar said.
However, Musk rejected the BJP leader’s claim and said, “anything can be hacked”.