The Election Fee has denied Congress MP Randeep Surjewala’s allegation that digital voting machines utilized in South Africa had been being utilized in Karnataka with out the required testing, saying it has by no means despatched the EVMs there and that the machines will not be utilized in that nation.
Responding to Surjewala’s Could 8 letter on Thursday, a day after Karnataka voted, the EC requested the Congress chief to “publicly expose” those that gave him the false info and requested for affirmation of motion taken by 5pm on Could 15. The ballot panel mentioned it had held again an instantaneous response owing to the 48-hour silence interval earlier than polling.
“We have now been knowledgeable of this by numerous sources together with the very fact all these EVMs have been obtained instantly again from South Africa with out going by means of the method of re-validation and re-verification by the suitable software program/mechanisms by the producer i.e. Electronics Company of India,” the Congress chief wrote in his letter, as cited by the EC in its response.
The EC mentioned it had “by no means despatched EVMs to South Africa to be used of their elections” and that it had by no means imported EVMs from any nation. It added that EVMs will not be utilized in South African elections and this might have been verified from the web site of the nation’s Election Fee. It mentioned all EVMs used within the Karnataka elections had been new ones from ECI and this was communicated to the Karnataka Congress president as per protocol in a letter on March 29.
The EC mentioned that being a nationwide get together of lengthy standing, the Congress would pay attention to the protocols for first-level checking and randomisation of EVMs and that Congress representatives had been current when these processes had been carried out in Karnataka.
“The factual foundation of the data supplied by the ‘numerous sources’ with regard to South Africa being clearly non-existent, categorically empower INC, being the entity focused by false info, to publicly expose such mischievous ‘sources’. Additional, you could guarantee such rumour- mongers are dropped at justice in order that INC’s long-standing popularity of accountable stakeholder of Indian electoral system will not be dented,” the EC wrote.