A first person piece by the man who has a case slapped on him (coming up on January 11) for exposing flaws in the Electronic Voting Machines

The results of Indian general elections held in 2009 came as a surprise, upsetting all forecasts made by psephologists and political parties. Several underdogs and first timers performed extraordinarily over seasoned popular politicians beating them by huge margins.


Polling officers sealing the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in Mumbai

Apart from other concerns, the suspicious behaviour of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) during elections made several observers doubt the outcome of that election. It seemed easy to explain these away as an aberration and nobody was held responsible.
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But the fact remained that these black boxes could not be understood or audited by citizens so that they could trust results displayed by these machines.

Even the basics of transparency and verifiability in elections were completely ignored.u00a0 Besides, the software and design rights of these EVMs are with its manufacturers Electronics Corporation Of India Limited (ECIL), and thus outside the control of the Election Commission Of India, which made it appear quite bizarre.

Concluding that these were serious concerns, which could undermine democracy, a Non Governmental Organisation (NGO) called Election Watch 2009 from Andhra Pradesh approached me to initiate a thorough study of these machines.

After a convincing debate, I decided to study EVMs as corporate social responsibility of my Hyderabad-based company, Netindia. Under my guidance, the Netindia team developed a 'look alike EVM'. It took hardly two weeks for my team to study and build a working prototype of a 'look alike EVM' with trojans inside the code.
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Our 'look alike EVM' resembles the one which the Election Commission of India (EC) uses, and even functions almost in a similar manner. My team and I conducted a mock election and altered the original results by triggering off the trojans inside our 'look alike EVM', convincing members of the NGO, that their apprehensions were indeed justified.

Later on, another NGO called Jana Chaitanya Vedika, along with Netindia engineers as co-petitioners, filed a PIL in the Supreme Court on July 9, 2009, seeking a direction to appoint independent experts to study vulnerabilities in the existing EVMs, and to restrain these from being used, until scientists approved a tamper-proof EVM design.

On hearing our petition, the Supreme Court made oral comments that the Election Commission of India should call for an all-party meet to resolve the matter and it disposed the petition without prejudice, directing us to approach the Election Commission first to address concerns raised in our petition.

By then, several political leaders who raised similar concerns before the Election Commission, referred the technical observations made by me and my team in their petitions and even requested affidavits from me to be placed before courts.

That was when the Election Commission challenged me and my team to prove that tampering is possible, by providing us with EVMs at the premises of the Nirvachan Sadan in New Delhi.
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But ironically, the letter of invitation from the Election Commission Of India to prove that tampering is possible, was also followed by a criminal notice from the Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), one of the manufacturers of EVMs to me and my team, so as to scare us away from taking up the challenge!

By then, GVLN Rao a prominent psephologist who was keenly following the proceedings extended his support to us and this led to formation of a new forum to fight election irregularities called VETA (Citizens Forum for Verifiability Transparency & Accountability in Indian Elections).

So, besides me and my team, Janata Party president Dr Subramanian Swamy, former advocate general of Orissa Jayant Das, as well as psephologist GVLN Rao, who became VETA's president attended the meeting with the Election Commission at Nirvachan Sadan, on September 3, 2009.

Surprisingly, at this meeting, our demonstration of tampering with an original EVM was halted abruptly by Election Commission officials, even as we were in the midst of identifying its vulnerabilities.

The Election Commission officials claimed that our demonstration violated intellectual property rights of the EVMs manufacturers!

After being turned away by the Election Commission, we were approached by an anonymous source in February 2010. This source, who was concerned about the physical security of these machines, managed to get hold of an EVM and give it to us, so that we could study it.

This was also the time when EVM security researchers, Alex Halderman from the USA and Rop Gonggrijp from the Netherlands, happened to be in India attending a conference on EVMs at Chennai, which was organized by Janata Party president Dr Subramanian Swamy.

Dr Swamy heard about us and came to meet us in Hyderabad for a hands-on investigation of the machine.
A video and a well-drafted research paper was made by the trio, showing several vulnerabilities in existing EVMs and revealed to the public through websites indiaevm.org as well as Indianevm.com. When a TV channel, also broadcast the same footage on April 28, 2010, it raised an alarm across all quarters.

Annoyed with our whistle-blowing, the Election Commission filed a case of theft on May 13, 2010, stating that the machine shown in the video, was stolen by an unknown person from the high security Customs House at Mumbai, where such machines are stored.

It was on August 6, 2009, when the police took my statement at Hyderabad and returned on August 21 to arrest me on charges of theft! I was detained for eight days before I was released on bail. Commenting in my bail order that a theft case is applicable only if a dishonest intention exists which is not seen in this case, Judge Sarma commended our efforts as a service to the nation.

But the Government of Maharashtra appealed against the bail order before the district court, and appointed H H Ponda to argue the case. Mahesh Jethmalani appeared on my behalf and arguments by both sides have ended.
As things stand, the matter is now up for hearing on January 11, 2011, before the Principal Judge M L Tahiliyani, the same judge, who decided Ajmal Kasab's fate.

Electronic Vanishing Machines?

It may be back to the trusty paper ballot, as a committee set up to examine the flaws in Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) met recently and is all set to submit its report

India's Deputy Election Commissioner Alok Shukla told MiD DAY that an Election Commission appointed technical expert committee set up to examine the flaws in Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) will submit its report shortly.