Continuing his attack on Electronic Voting Machines, notorious Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan recently reiterated the old demand that the ECI should reveal the source code of EVMs in the public domain. Strikingly this demand was already rejected by the Supreme Court last year asserting that it will make the source code more vulnerable.
In a vile rhetoric against ECI and the current CEC, Prashant Bhushan ranted, “The manner in which the lapdog CEC is behaving wrt EVMs: Not revealing the source code of the programmable chips; not willing to meet Opp parties on this; not willing to even count the VVPAT slips; reveals the malafide intent of the CEC.”
Issuing an open threat, the disgraced Supreme Court advocate added, “They must know they will be jailed if they are caught with manipulation of EVMs.”
Bhushan made the above remarks while responding to a media report that the Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) criticised ECI for allegedly not responding to RTI queries relating to EVM and VVPATs for more than a year. The said RTI was filed by the former Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer M G Devasahayam.
Devasahayam was among the signatories who tried to cast apprehensions about the credibility of electronic voting machines (EVMs), voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT), and the vote-counting process. He had filed the application under the Right to Information (RTI) Act with the poll panel, seeking information on the actions taken regarding their representation on 22.11.2022.
Through his RTI application, Devasahayam sought to obtain information about the individuals and public authorities to whom the representation was forwarded, any meetings conducted on the matter, and all pertinent file notations.
Prashant Bhushan attacked the ECI for not revealing the source of ‘programable chips’ of the EVMs, but the fact is that the highest court of the country has already dismissed this demand.
Notably, in September 2023, a three-judge bench of the SC headed by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud dismissed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) that sought an audit of the source code of all Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). The PIL had also demanded that the audit report be released in the public domain.
While rejecting the PIL, the CJI said, “What is the material before us to doubt about the Election Commission? How can source code be placed in the public domain? It cannot be made available in the public domain. That will make them more vulnerable.”
In a short hearing, petitioner Sunil Ahya, representing himself, informed the bench that he had previously submitted a representation to the Election Commission of India but had not received any response.
Rejecting the PIL, the bench in its order said, “Plea is filed seeking independent audit of the source code of the EVM applying to a particular standard of IEEE1028, and so that the report is placed in the public domain. The petitioner had earlier moved a plea before the general elections in 2019 and the court had held that due to impending elections it was not possible to get into the plea.”
The order stated, “Another PIL was filed in 2020 and this court permitted him to make a representation before the ECI. Petitioner says he made three representations to the ECI but is still in the dark. ECI is entrusted with control over elections. Presently, petitioner places no actionable material before this court to show that ECI has acted in breach of its constitutional mandate. Ultimately, placing the source code audit in the public domain intervenes with the policy issue and we are not inclined to interfere in this policy issue. There is no material to show ECI is not fulfilling its mandate. Thus, we do not interfere in this petition.”
Prashant Bhushan spread another lie by using the phrase ‘programmable chip’, because the EVMs contain One Time Programmable (OTP) microcontrollers. This means, once the software has been loaded into the chips, it can’t be altered.
Bhushan also lied by saying that ECI is not willing to even count the VVPAT slips. At present, VVPAT slips of five EVM-VVPATs in each assembly segment is counted, as per a Supreme Court order. The VVPATs to be taken up for counting paper slips are randomly selected through a ‘draw of lots’ conducted by the Returning Officer in the presence of the General Observer and the candidates or their representatives. The paper slips are counted in a secure VVPAT counting booth under a camera inside the counting hall, after the last round of counting of votes on the EVMs in the constituency.
A petition to count all VVPATs has been filed at the Supreme Court, and the apex court is hearing the matter. However, the ECI has opposed the demand to count all VVPAT slips or even 50%, saying that it would delay the announcement of results by five to six days.
ECI also points out that in all the instances where the slips are counted, no discrepancy was found with EVM results. As per the poll body, calculations by the Indian Statistical Institute show that even counting slips from 479 randomly selected VVPATs across the country would guarantee over 99% accuracy. At 5 VVPATs per assembly constituency, at present over 20,000 VVPATs are counted.
Therefore, slips of randomly selected VVPATs are counted at present, and the plea to count all of them is under consideration at the Supreme Court.
What ECI says about the source code of EVM
The FAQ page on EVMs on the ECI website gives detailed information about the source code of the EVMs, which explains why they can’t be hacked.
According to FAQ on EVMs published by the Election Commission, India does not import any EVM, all EVMs used in India are made by two Indian companies Bharat Electronics in Bengaluru and Electronics Corporation of India in Hyderabad. The Software Programme Code for the voting machines is written in-house by these two companies, not outsourced. The process is subjected to security procedures at factory level to maintain the highest levels of integrity.
After the code has been written, it is converted to machine code, and only the machine code in machine language is given to the chip manufacturer abroad. This is because, at present there is no chip producer in India capable of producing such semi-conductor microchips.
The FAQ page says, “every microchip has an identification number embedded into memory and the producers have their digital signatures on them. So, the question of their replacement does not arise at all because microchips are subjected to functional tests with regard to the software. Any attempt to replace microchip is detectable and can make EVM in-operative. Thus, both changing existing programme or introducing new one are detectable making EVM in-operative.”
Moreover, the new third-generation M3 EVM has additional features like Tamper Detection and Self Diagnostics. The tamper detection feature makes an EVM inoperative the moment anyone tries to open the machine. The Self-diagnostic feature checks the EVM fully every time it is switched on. Any change in its hardware or software will be detected.
On the technology used in the EVMs, the FAQ says, “The ECI-EVMs use some of the most sophisticated technological features like one time programmable (OTP) microcontrollers, dynamic coding of key codes, date and time stamping of each and every key press, advanced encryption technology and EVM-tracking software to handle EVM logistics, among others to make the machine 100% tamper proof. In addition to these, new model M3 EVMs also have tamper detection and self-diagnostics as added features. Since, software is based on OTP, the program cannot be altered, re-written or Re-read. Thus, making EVM tamper proof. If anyone make, attempt, the machine will become in operative.”