Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has sparked an intense political debate in India after he wrote against the electronic voting machines on X, previously Twitter. While his post had no India link, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav raised the concerns of trust on EVMs. Yadav also retweeted Musk’s post.
Earlier in the day, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, an Independent candidate in this year’s US presidential polls, raised concerns over Puerto Rico’s polls. He alleged that several issues were detected in the EVMs. He said that since there were paper trails, the irregularities were corrected. He linked it to the US elections and said that absence of paper trail can cause a lot of problems and demanded return of the paper ballot.
Quoting this post by Kennedy Jr, Musk took to X and said that EVMs must be ‘eliminated’. He further said that chances of hacking be it by humans or AI can’t be ruled out.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi used Musk’s post and questioned the reliability of the EVMs. He called them the ‘black box’ and said that there is no permission to scrutinize them. Without taking the Election Commission of India’s name, Gandhi said that when ‘institutions lack accountability’, ‘democracy ends up becoming a sham.’
SP president Akhilesh Yadav also joined the chorus and said that technology is meant to ease issues but if the tech becomes an issue in itself then their usage must be stopped. Attacking the BJP, Yadav said that when there is a global outrage against EVMs then why the saffron party insists on its use. the SP president also demanded that paper ballots should be used for all the future elections in India.
However, in response to Musk, former Electronics and Information Technology Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar labeled his statement a “sweeping generalization,” emphasizing that India’s EVMs are “custom designed” and cannot be “reprogrammed.”