Rajeev Chandrasekhar mentioned going by the Tesla chief’s logic, “each Tesla automotive will be hacked”.
New Delhi:
Former Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who had provided US billionaire Elon Musk a “tutorial” on Indian Digital Voting Machines, in the present day doubled down on his argument, saying going by the Tesla chief’s logic, “each Tesla automotive will be hacked”.
Responding to Mr Musk’s declare that “the whole lot will be hacked”, Mr Chandrasekhar, who headed the Union ministry of Electronics and Data Expertise throughout Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s second tenure, mentioned, “I believe he’s factually incorrect in saying that”.
“A calculator or a toaster can’t be hacked. Due to this fact, there’s a restrict when it comes to the place this paradigm of hacking can prolong,” he informed information company ANI. “He (Elon Musk) is factually flawed… To assert that there can’t be a safe digital product on the planet is to then say that each Tesla automotive will be hacked,” he added.
Mr Musk could be proper provided that the machines in query are related like telephones or computer systems, which EVMs should not, Mr Chandrasekhar had earlier argued. “Elon Musk’s view might apply to the US and different locations – the place they use common compute platforms to construct internet-connected voting machines,” he had mentioned.
“Elon Musk has not understood what the Indian EVM is. Indian EVMs don’t lend themselves to being hacked as a result of they’re exactly a really limited-intelligence machine,” he defined in the present day.
The Tesla chief had set the ball rolling over the weekend together with his publish questioning the reliability of EVMs.
“We must always get rid of digital voting machines. The chance of being hacked by people or AI, whereas small, continues to be too excessive,” he had posted on X in response to Unbiased US Presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr’s publish on stories that Puerto Rico’s elections noticed voting irregularities in lots of of EVMs.
Because the Opposition used the publish to assist its reservations about EVMs, Mr Chandrasekhar claimed that Mr Musk’s remark was a “large sweeping generalisation”.
“It is a large sweeping generalisation assertion that means nobody can construct safe digital {hardware}. Flawed,” replied the previous minister. “No connectivity, no bluetooth, wifi, Web; there isn’t any approach in. Manufacturing unit-programmed controllers that can’t be reprogrammed. Digital voting machines will be architected and constructed proper as India has performed. We might be completely happy to run a tutorial, Elon,” his publish learn.
“Something will be hacked,” shot again Mr Musk.
Coming amid stories that claimed a relative of Ravindra Waikar, Shiv Sena MP from Mumbai North West, was utilizing a telephone that might be related to an EVM, Mr Musk’s feedback fuelled huge Opposition criticism.
Congress’s Rahul Gandhi mentioned EVMs in India “are a ‘black field” and “no person is allowed to scrutinize them”. “Critical considerations are being raised about transparency in our electoral course of,” he added.
“When dangers of EVM tampering are being flagged in a number of elections the world over and well-known know-how consultants are flagging dangers, the BJP should clear the air on why they’re bent on utilizing EVMs,” posted Samajwadi Get together chief Akhilesh Yadav.
Rajya Sabha MP and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) chief Priyanka Chaturvedi flagged the stories on Mumbai election. “It is a fraud on the highest stage and but the @ECISVEEP continues to sleep,” she mentioned in a publish on X.
Requires a return to paper poll has already been decisively turned down by the Supreme Court docket, which mentioned the machines provide important benefits. They’ve eradicated sales space capturing and invalid votes, cut back paper wastage and expedite the counting course of minimizing errors, the judges have mentioned.
