Foreign Chips From Dubious Firms Used in EVMs Raises Serious Questions

In 2010 senior members of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) raised serious concerns in a 200-page long book with a foreword by L K Advani asking if India’s democracy was at risk because of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). These concerns seem to be intensifying more and more with new information on imported foreign chips used in EVMs coming to light thereby slowly eroding the trust of people in EVM-based voting system.

RTI’s by Venkatesh Nayak, the programme coordinator of an independent NGO based in Delhi has exposed that imported micro-controllers from a multi-billion dollar corporation based in the Netherlands were sourced for the EVMs used in the current elections. The name of the company is NXP Semiconductor and the product identification is MK61FX512VMD12.

Below is the Corporate Office address of NXP whose micro-controllers were used in EVMs for current elections...

While the Election Commission is trying hard to convince the people of India to have faith in the EVMs, serious questions are being raised on the EC’s own outlook and approach.

Firstly, why the ECI has not made any decision on the September 2018 recommendation of Central Information Commission to get competent authorities to examine whether detailed information about the firmware or source code used in the EVMs can be placed in public domain in order to create trust in EVM-based voting system?

Secondly, why despite the passage of more than 5 years, ECI did not act on the 2013 recommendation of its own Technical Evaluation Committee to make firmware or source code embedded in micro-controller used in EVMs transparent in order to ensure that there is no Trojan or other malware in the EVMs?

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Foreign Chips From Dubious Firms Used in EVMs Raises Serious Questions


Excerpt from GreatGameIndia‘s exclusive book India in Cognitive Dissonance. Get your copy from here.

In the absence of any actions from the ECI regarding the above concerns and recommendations to conduct free and fair elections the trust of the people of India in EVM-based election system would be further eroded.Excerpt from GreatGameIndia‘s exclusive book India in Cognitive Dissonance. Get your copy from here.