07-04-2009, 01:23 AM
<b><span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>ELECTIONS BE RIGGED THROUGH EVMs?</b></span>
From Our Delhi Bureau
NEW DELHI: Chief Election Commissioner Navin Chawla is sitting over a major scandal of a possible massive rigging of elections by manipulation of software of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).
But for the charge levelled by a former Delhi chief secretary five years senior to him in the IAS cadre, Chawla would have rejected such claims of rigging.
Omesh Saigal, a 1964 batch IAS officer of the Union Territory, stunned him with a presentation to force him to order an inquiry into any possibility of such a rigging. Chawla is himself a Union Territory cadre IAS of 1969 batch.
Deputy Election Commissioner Balakrishnan has been asked to conduct the inquiry on the basis of a report handed over by Saigal to the CEC, with a software he got developed to show how the elections can be rigged.
Saigal, who is an IIT alumni, has demanded an urgent check of the programme that runs the EVMs used in elections since 2004. He demonstrated with his software that its manipulation ensured that one has to just key in a certain code number and that will ensure every fifth vote cast in a particular polling booth goes in favour of a certain candidate.
He got interested to find out truth about a score of news reports in Press and on the net about candidates and parties expressing suspicion about the EVMs not recording the votes correctly as he wanted to ascertain whether these EVMs meet the standard of national integrity or safeguards the sanctity of the democracy.
In his letter to the CEC, Saigal alleged that the software written onto the EVMs has never been checked by the Election Commission ever since these machines were manufactured more than 6-7 years back.
His contention is that the EC merely relied on the certificates supplied by the manufacturers, the government-run BEL and ECIL. He alleged that these government firms had subcontracted private parties who actually provided these certificates.
âA public software audit of these machines from time to time, especially after and before an election, was a must to retain the credibility of the elections,â Saigal affirmed, demanding that for the sake of transparency names and ownerships of these private companies must be disclosed as also the details of the factories where they were actually manufactured.
The records retained in the factories must also be immediately taken over by the Commission to prevent any tampering and to facilitate an audit, he said.
He also pointed out how, after nearly two years of deliberation, Germanyâs Supreme Court ruled last March that e-voting was unconstitutional because the average citizen could not be expected to understand the exact steps involved in the recording and tallying of votes. Earlier, Ireland had given up E-voting for similar reasons.
In the US too, after considerable controversy the Federal Election Commission has come up in 2005 with detailed voting system guidelines which run into more than 400 pages. Saigal said it is noteworthy that not any of the safeguards mentioned in these guidelines is in place in India.
Saigal said he had gone into all the safeguards built into the E-voting system in India with the help of former colleagues and IT experts and finds it both âpossible and plausibleâ to rig these machines and get a crooked result.
He says if the credibility of the electoral process is to be ensured, pre- and post-election checks of the software now fused onto the chips of the EVMs is a must.
It is not that all the 10 lakh and odd machines used in the poll need to be checked. If we take only those booths where one of the candidates has received 75 per cent of the votes and in constituencies where the margin of the winner is less than 15,000, not more than 7000-odd machines will need to be checked.
Saigal argues in his report that âif we cannot do this we must revert to the paper ballot.â The need for a fair, free and transparent polling system transcends any reasons anyone may have to the contrary, he added.
Saigal says he organised a mock poll on a laptop to demonstrate how the results can be scewed by inserting a numerical code which is so simple. Just press F2, followed by the number of the favoured candidate. The demo showed that this code can be keyed in at any stage, even at the time of the poll by any voter.
Those who attended the mock exercise included Ms Asa Das, retired Secretary, Government of India, K F Fabian, retired IFS officer and former ambassador, Ravi Kathpalia, ex-controller general of accounts, and S K Agnihotri and Dr Krishan Saigal, retired former chief secretaries of Assam.
Saigal says at first glance, it does appear that there are adequate safeguards in place, as is mentioned in the FAQs on the Election Commission website, Returning Officers manual and details given in the website of the manufacturer, BEL.
He, however, asserts in his letter to CEC that there are huge gaps in the safeguards. âTake the assurance of the manufacturer that âProgramme codes once written and fused in this OTPROM (One Time Programmable Read Only Memory) cannot be read back or altered by anyone including the manufacturerâ.
Does this mean that even the Election Commission, when it received the machines, did not check and has not checked since whether the programme fused in by the manufacturer did not have a secret code as a string like the one that we have prepared, Saigal asked.
âIf, as it seems, the EC it relying on the certificate given by the manufacturer, we have no protection whatsoever against the manufacturer itself preparing a program like the one prepared by the undersigned and fusing it onto the chip/circuit board,â he affirms.
Once the election process begins, the EC claims total transparency in all its actions. First of all the machines are taken out of storage and sent to the Districts. Thereafter, according to a Govt of India website, ââ¦.these machines are checked only by the engineers of the two PSUs before each electionâ¦..â
Saigal says it is not clear what this âcheckingâ is all about and whether these âengineersâ are under the control of the EC. They use some âequipmentâ to prepare the machine by removing the result of the previous election and do not tamper or check the software chip in any way, the EC claims.
âIf this is all they do, why they need to come at all: surely the result could be deleted by simply pressing a button, which any official of EC could do! It is like you and me calling on Microsoft engineers to come in every time we need to permanently delete some program from our desktops!â
The EC claims that among the safeguards is the fact that randomisation is done at many levels so that it is impossible to find out which particular machine will go to which particular booth. Moreover, the order in which candidates are going to be listed in the electoral roll is known only a few days before the poll; so it is not possible for someone to rig the EVMâs software to favour a particular candidate.
Saigal, however, contests it. He says it is easy to say that randomisation will be of no help if the software is tricked. As for the fact that order of candidates is decided only a few days before the poll, with a specially prepared software the poll can be rigged at the time of the poll by any voter, he points out.
âNo, these safeguards are mere cosmetics; what we really need is a fool-proof method of checking whether the software in any/all machines has been corrupted through lapse of time or deliberate tampering or was so corrupted in the first place,â the former Delhi chief secretary added.
R.Rajagopalan
http://janamejayan.wordpress.com/
From Our Delhi Bureau
NEW DELHI: Chief Election Commissioner Navin Chawla is sitting over a major scandal of a possible massive rigging of elections by manipulation of software of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).
But for the charge levelled by a former Delhi chief secretary five years senior to him in the IAS cadre, Chawla would have rejected such claims of rigging.
Omesh Saigal, a 1964 batch IAS officer of the Union Territory, stunned him with a presentation to force him to order an inquiry into any possibility of such a rigging. Chawla is himself a Union Territory cadre IAS of 1969 batch.
Deputy Election Commissioner Balakrishnan has been asked to conduct the inquiry on the basis of a report handed over by Saigal to the CEC, with a software he got developed to show how the elections can be rigged.
Saigal, who is an IIT alumni, has demanded an urgent check of the programme that runs the EVMs used in elections since 2004. He demonstrated with his software that its manipulation ensured that one has to just key in a certain code number and that will ensure every fifth vote cast in a particular polling booth goes in favour of a certain candidate.
He got interested to find out truth about a score of news reports in Press and on the net about candidates and parties expressing suspicion about the EVMs not recording the votes correctly as he wanted to ascertain whether these EVMs meet the standard of national integrity or safeguards the sanctity of the democracy.
In his letter to the CEC, Saigal alleged that the software written onto the EVMs has never been checked by the Election Commission ever since these machines were manufactured more than 6-7 years back.
His contention is that the EC merely relied on the certificates supplied by the manufacturers, the government-run BEL and ECIL. He alleged that these government firms had subcontracted private parties who actually provided these certificates.
âA public software audit of these machines from time to time, especially after and before an election, was a must to retain the credibility of the elections,â Saigal affirmed, demanding that for the sake of transparency names and ownerships of these private companies must be disclosed as also the details of the factories where they were actually manufactured.
The records retained in the factories must also be immediately taken over by the Commission to prevent any tampering and to facilitate an audit, he said.
He also pointed out how, after nearly two years of deliberation, Germanyâs Supreme Court ruled last March that e-voting was unconstitutional because the average citizen could not be expected to understand the exact steps involved in the recording and tallying of votes. Earlier, Ireland had given up E-voting for similar reasons.
In the US too, after considerable controversy the Federal Election Commission has come up in 2005 with detailed voting system guidelines which run into more than 400 pages. Saigal said it is noteworthy that not any of the safeguards mentioned in these guidelines is in place in India.
Saigal said he had gone into all the safeguards built into the E-voting system in India with the help of former colleagues and IT experts and finds it both âpossible and plausibleâ to rig these machines and get a crooked result.
He says if the credibility of the electoral process is to be ensured, pre- and post-election checks of the software now fused onto the chips of the EVMs is a must.
It is not that all the 10 lakh and odd machines used in the poll need to be checked. If we take only those booths where one of the candidates has received 75 per cent of the votes and in constituencies where the margin of the winner is less than 15,000, not more than 7000-odd machines will need to be checked.
Saigal argues in his report that âif we cannot do this we must revert to the paper ballot.â The need for a fair, free and transparent polling system transcends any reasons anyone may have to the contrary, he added.
Saigal says he organised a mock poll on a laptop to demonstrate how the results can be scewed by inserting a numerical code which is so simple. Just press F2, followed by the number of the favoured candidate. The demo showed that this code can be keyed in at any stage, even at the time of the poll by any voter.
Those who attended the mock exercise included Ms Asa Das, retired Secretary, Government of India, K F Fabian, retired IFS officer and former ambassador, Ravi Kathpalia, ex-controller general of accounts, and S K Agnihotri and Dr Krishan Saigal, retired former chief secretaries of Assam.
Saigal says at first glance, it does appear that there are adequate safeguards in place, as is mentioned in the FAQs on the Election Commission website, Returning Officers manual and details given in the website of the manufacturer, BEL.
He, however, asserts in his letter to CEC that there are huge gaps in the safeguards. âTake the assurance of the manufacturer that âProgramme codes once written and fused in this OTPROM (One Time Programmable Read Only Memory) cannot be read back or altered by anyone including the manufacturerâ.
Does this mean that even the Election Commission, when it received the machines, did not check and has not checked since whether the programme fused in by the manufacturer did not have a secret code as a string like the one that we have prepared, Saigal asked.
âIf, as it seems, the EC it relying on the certificate given by the manufacturer, we have no protection whatsoever against the manufacturer itself preparing a program like the one prepared by the undersigned and fusing it onto the chip/circuit board,â he affirms.
Once the election process begins, the EC claims total transparency in all its actions. First of all the machines are taken out of storage and sent to the Districts. Thereafter, according to a Govt of India website, ââ¦.these machines are checked only by the engineers of the two PSUs before each electionâ¦..â
Saigal says it is not clear what this âcheckingâ is all about and whether these âengineersâ are under the control of the EC. They use some âequipmentâ to prepare the machine by removing the result of the previous election and do not tamper or check the software chip in any way, the EC claims.
âIf this is all they do, why they need to come at all: surely the result could be deleted by simply pressing a button, which any official of EC could do! It is like you and me calling on Microsoft engineers to come in every time we need to permanently delete some program from our desktops!â
The EC claims that among the safeguards is the fact that randomisation is done at many levels so that it is impossible to find out which particular machine will go to which particular booth. Moreover, the order in which candidates are going to be listed in the electoral roll is known only a few days before the poll; so it is not possible for someone to rig the EVMâs software to favour a particular candidate.
Saigal, however, contests it. He says it is easy to say that randomisation will be of no help if the software is tricked. As for the fact that order of candidates is decided only a few days before the poll, with a specially prepared software the poll can be rigged at the time of the poll by any voter, he points out.
âNo, these safeguards are mere cosmetics; what we really need is a fool-proof method of checking whether the software in any/all machines has been corrupted through lapse of time or deliberate tampering or was so corrupted in the first place,â the former Delhi chief secretary added.
R.Rajagopalan
http://janamejayan.wordpress.com/