New Delhi: Hitting back at Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s concerns over electronic voting machine (EVM) vulnerabilities, senior BJP leader Rajeev Chandrasekhar has asserted that Indian EVMs are securely designed to be “unhackable”.
The row erupted after Musk, citing risks of hacking by “humans or AI”, advocated eliminating EVMs globally in response to alleged U.S. voting irregularities.
This prompted Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to question the transparency of India’s EVMs.
In an interview with ANI, Chandrasekhar, the former Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT, said Musk has “not understood what the Indian EVM is”.
“Indian EVMs do not lend themselves to hacking as they are standalone devices with very limited computing intelligence and no internet connectivity,” the BJP leader stated.
Chandrasekhar highlighted that claiming no digital product can be secure is akin to suggesting Tesla cars are also vulnerable to hacking, which is factually incorrect.
Underlining the unique architecture behind Indian EVMs’ security, he said, “If there’s no connectivity to Wi-Fi, 5G or the internet, there’s no way to hack them.”
The Election Commission has maintained that the EVMs used in India’s elections, including the recent Lok Sabha polls that returned PM Modi to power, are tamper-proof and trustworthy – rejecting opposition allegations of rigging.
