Ex-Union Minister Chandrasekhar Counters Elon Musk In Big EVM Debate, Rahul Gandhi Provides A Footnote

Former Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Sunday took strong objection to SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s call for eliminating electronic voting machines (EVMs) citing the possibility of electronic devices being hacked by humans or artificial intelligence.

Calling Musk’s concerns a “huge sweeping generalisation”, Chandrasekhar emphasized that in India EVMs are custom-designed, secure, and isolated from any network or media.

“This is a huge sweeping generalization statement that implies no one can build secure digital hardware. Wrong. Elon Musk’s view may apply to the US and other places – where they use regular compute platforms to build Internet-connected Voting machines,” former Union minister said in a post on X.

He further noted that Indian EVMs are custom-designed, secure and isolated from any network or media, with “no connectivity, no bluetooth, wifi, internet. ie there is no way in.”

“Factory programmed controllers that cannot be reprogrammed. Electronic voting machines can be architected and built right as India has done. We wud be happy to run a tutorial Elon,” he added.

Replying to the BJP leader, Musk said, “Anything can be hacked.”

What Did Elon Musk Say?

This comes after Musk, in a recent post, expressed concerns about the validity of electronic voting machines, stating that they should be eliminated due to the risk of being hacked by humans or AI.

“We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high,” Musk said, quote-posting a post by US presidential contender Robert F Kennedy Jr who initially wrote about EVM irregularities during elections in Puerto Rico.

“Puerto Rico’s primary elections just experienced hundreds of voting irregularities related to electronic voting machines. Luckily, there was a paper trail so the problem was identified and vote tallies corrected,” US presidential contender Robert F Kennedy Jr. said in his original X post, citing the Associated Press.

“What happens in jurisdictions where there is no paper trail? US citizens need to know that every one of their votes were counted, and that their elections cannot be hacked. We need to return to paper ballots to avoid electronic interference with elections,” he further added.

“My administration will require paper ballots and we will guarantee honest and fair elections,” he said.

The Puerto Rican elections commission announced earlier this Tuesday that it is reevaluating its contract with a US electronic voting company after it found scores of discrepancies in voting following the island’s heated primaries.

Rahul Gandhi Joins Debate

Reacting to Musk’s original tweet, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi called EVM the ‘black box’ that nobody is allowed to scrutinize.

“EVMs in India are a “black box,” and nobody is allowed to scrutinize them. Serious concerns are being raised about transparency in our electoral process. Democracy ends up becoming a sham and prone to fraud when institutions lack accountability,” the Congress leader said in a post on X.

Gandhi also posted a screengrab of a media report saying Mumbai police have accused one Mangesh Pandilkar– a relative of Shiv Sena leader Ravindra Waikar who won the Mumbai North West Lok Sabha election by 48 votes– of using the phone which was connected to the EVM.

According ti police, this mobile phone was used for generating the OTP that unlocked the EVM machine, which was used inside the NESCO Centre on June 4.