Two parties to participate in EVM hacking challenge

The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)  and the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) will participate in the Election Commission’s challenge on June 3 to test the credibility of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).
The EVM challenge in which doubting political parties have been given an opportunity to prove that the EVMs can be hacked, will be held between 10am and 2pm, the Election Commission said in a statement. The deadline expired yesterday for seven national parties and more than 40 state parties to send their interest to participate in the challenge.
The Election Commission, which said that only the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) has nominated three representatives for participation in the challenge, later said that after rechecking, it found that the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) had also agreed to participate.
The NCP has not chosen any four EVMs as per the framework and left it to the EC.
Therefore, to organise the challenge, the ECI will bring a few EVMs from Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand for conducting the challenge, the commission said.
In all, eight parties sent their response to the ECI till 5pm, when the deadline expired, while the Rashtriya Janata Dal’s message about its willingness to participate only came at 5.39pm and was hence rejected.
The Communist Party of India, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the Rashtriya Lok Dal only expressed their interest in observing the challenge.
Pudducherry-based All India NR Congress has written to the commission that it is not participating.
The Congress yesterday said the terms and conditions attached by the Election Commission to an EVM hackathon from June 3 were a “barrier to a thorough test” of the voting machines and called for relaxations in three such rules for the challenge.
Terming the Election Commission’s EVM-hacking challenge from June 3 a “drama”, the Aam Aadmi Party yesterday said it will not participate in the event.
The party also questioned why the poll panel was “running away” from organising a no-holds-barred hackathon, as promised.
“This is not a hackathon. Why participate in a drama,” AAP’s Delhi convenor Gopal Rai said, adding the party will “not accept the EVM challenge in its present context”.
AAP’s decision came a day after the Election Commission rejected its demand to reconsider the terms for the EVM hackathon and allow them to attempt tampering of an EVM motherboard during the challenge.