AAP to Hold Their Own Hackathon On Same Day as EC’s EVM Challenge

The EC had earlier turned down AAP’s demand to be allowed to tamper with the EVMs during the hackathon.

AAP MLA Saurabh Bharadwaj announced the party’s decision to hold the hackathon on the same day as EC. (Photo: ANI)

A week after the Election Commission rejected Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) demand to tamper with the motherboards of the EVMs during the hackathon challenge, the AAP has confirmed its decision to hold its own version of the EVM hacking challenge.

Speaking to ANI, AAP MLA Saurabh Bharadwaj said:

We have conveyed to EC that we will hold EVM hackathon on the day of EC’s EVM challenge.

Calling upon technical experts to participate in the hackathon, Bharadwaj said that the rules of the challenge will be the same as the ones laid by EC. Making the point that the EC’s hackathon rules are rigged so that even a hacked EVM couldn’t be detected by a hackathon, he said:

“Our challenge is bigger and better than EC's. It will be conducted on the tampered EVMs, which the EC has disowned. All the hackers are invited to prove that the EVMs have been tampered with,” he said.

According to an NDTV report, the AAP decided to skip the EC’s challenge on Saturday, as they felt that the rules were too restrictive.

On 24 May, the AAP had urged the EC to consider allowing the parties participating in the hackathon to be allowed to tamper with the motherboards of the EVMs. The EC however, turned down this demand.

In a letter to AAP, the EC had said:

“... allowing any change of the motherboard or any internal circuit etc of the EVM is like saying that anyone should be permitted to manufacture a new machine and introduce newly made EVMs in ECI system, which is implausible and irrational... any 'look-alike' machine is just a different gadget, which is manifestly designed and made to function in a 'tampered' manner and has no relevance, incidence or bearing on the Commission's EVMs.”

The EC had thrown an open challenge to all the political parties, inviting them to participate in the challenge to test the susceptibility of the EVMs to hacking. The EVM hackathon will take place on Saturday.