Page 164 - General Election

Presiding Officer in Form 17-C and Presiding Officer’s diary. Copy of Form 17-C is

shared with the polling agents of the candidates.

6. Whether counting of printed paper slips of VVPAT is compulsory on the

counting day?

Compulsory counting of printed paper slips of VVPAT is done only in the following
cases:

i)In case of “no display” of result on the Control Unit the printed paper slips of
respective VVPAT(s) are counted. These slips have been verified by voters at the
time of casting their votes.

ii) As directed by the Honorable Supreme court of India, mandatory verification of

printed VVPAT paper slips of five randomly selected polling stations of each
Assembly Constituency or each Assembly Segment in case of election to the House
of the People, before declaring result.

7. It is claimed that EVM machines can be manipulated by connecting it to cell
phones, Bluetooth devices, replacing parts of it and other forms of

manipulation, apart from physical replacement of it by other EVMs. Is it
true?

No, the allegations are baseless and unscientific. The technical information about

the micro controllers is available in public domain and can be accessed on the
website of microcontroller manufacturers.

The EVMs / VVPATs use controllers which are One Time Programmable (OTP). This
feature is activated by a code /command, fed via a software program, and in the

first time run at power ‘on’ sets an internal register to shut off any re-
programmability capability. The code / command and procedure are also available
in public domain in the datasheets/ application notes on use of these

microcontrollers.

If these controllers had internal Bluetooth or Wi-Fi module then information in the
form of features, internal block diagram of the microcontrollers, pin assignment and
signals at all pins of the module would be available in the data sheets. Also, if such

Transmitters or Receivers were available in the microcontrollers then power supply
pins, antenna pins, frequency assignment pins, crystal oscillator pins etc. that are

specific to Bluetooth or Wi-Fi would also be available in data sheets. The
microcontrollers used by BEL ECIL do not have such modules and this can be verified
by information in their data sheets available in the public domain. In spite and
despite above available technical information the ECI-EVM is subjected to strong

quality checks by electromagnetic testing to verify that no Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or
unwanted frequency capability is present.

Hence, ECI-EVMs are standalone devices without any wired or wireless connectivity

with units outside the EVM system. Advanced technical features and robust
administrative safeguards are in place to rule out any such possibility of

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