Supreme Court should take cognizance of ‘EVM-hacking’ issue and order probe: Surjewala

Congress general secretary Randeep Surjewala on Friday questioned the silence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Central government and the Election Commission after US National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard’s statement on hacking of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and said that the Supreme Court should take suo motu cognizance of the issue and order an inquiry. He also said in a post on ‘X’ that Gabbard has publicly raised the issue of hacking of EVMs and their vulnerabilities. Surjewala said, in fact she said that EVMs can be misused to manipulate election results. The question is why are the Chief Election Commissioner and the Election Commission silent? Why is the Commission cooking up sources based stories to deny what Ms Tulsi Gabbard said? Why are the Prime Minister, the NDA government and the BJP silent? Surjewala also said that the Election Commission and the Centre should contact the US government and Gabbard to get all the details of EVM hacking and other vulnerabilities. He said, should not the Supreme Court of India take suo motu cognizance of this issue and conduct a thorough investigation considering that free and fair elections and democracy are part of the basic structure of the Constitution? Meanwhile, Election Commission sources on Friday rejected reports that there is any possibility of EVMs being hacked in India. They said that the machines work like simple calculators, which are not connected to the Internet or infrared.