Page 165 - General Election

manipulation. The BU, CU and VVPATs have digital certification and carry out mutual

authentication when connected together before communicating. Any other
lookalike machine, therefore, cannot be connected to ECI EVMs. Apart from the
technical safeguards there are very elaborate and tight administrative safeguards,

procedures mandated by ECI to ensure the physical safety and security of the EVMs
at all times.

In addition, only the authorized, well-trained engineers on the rolls of the PSUs (BEL
/ ECIL) are entrusted with the critical task of carrying out the First Level Checking

FLC and loading of symbols, and providing other technical support as per need. The
entire process is carried out in a transparent manner in the presence of the
stakeholders.

8. It is claimed that the EVMs cannot be assumed to be tamper-proof so the
electronic voting system should be redesigned to be software and hard-

ware independent in order to be verifiable or auditable. Views on the
same?

If a DRE produces a voter verifiable paper audit trail, it is software independent.
The ECI EVM produces a paper audit trail and is therefore software independent.

(a) Firstly, ECI-EVM is thoroughly verifiable, as the voter verifies the vote cast
on BU for candidate of his choice from the slip printed on paper by VVPAT
that has details (Serial number, name and symbol) of the candidate voted

for.

Secondly the correlation between the ballot slip printed by VVPAT and the vote
recorded in the EVM is established statistically with a high degree of confidence

by tallying the electronic count of the Control Units with the VVPAT slip counts
of five randomly selected polling stations in each assembly constituency/
segment. This is done as mandated by the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India.

(b) Evaluation of ECI-EVM design at its formulation stage as well as prototype and
pilot stages are done traditionally by testing for worst case considerations, and
performance measured on established statistical principles. Hence, EVM design as

well as voting through EVM is reliable.

The extant instructions of ECI make sure that all stake holders are involved in all the
steps of EVM storage, movement, checking FLC and preparation, Commissioning,

distribution to polling parties, Mock-Poll on poll day and during polling itself. This is
to ensure transparency and to build trust amongst the public at large.

9. Testing is never adequate to declare an electronic system as complicated as

an EVM fail safe and verified. What are the extra precautions and control
mechanisms of ECI on this matter?

ECI-EVMs are simple to operate and use, stand-alone and robust vote recording

machines. EVMs use advanced cryptographic methods to maintain their overall
integrity. EVMs cannot be connected by wires or wirelessly to any unauthorized

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