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Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla hit out at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on his statement on EVMs, and said that he was peddling "half-truths" and "full lies" to shift people's focus from the fuel price hike in Karnataka.
This comes after the row on Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) erupted after Tesla CEO Elon Musk claimed that EVMs can be hacked. Responding to Musk's post, Rahul Gandhi raised doubts about the transparency on EVM and termed it as "black box." "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," Rahul Gandhi posted on Sunday. Attacking Rahul Gandhi on Monday, Shehzad Poonawalla accused Congress of hiding its "black deeds" and creating doubts against the democratic institutions of the country. Speaking to ANI, the BJP leader said, "Rahul Gandhi who speaks of black box wants to hide his black deeds and therefore he wants to use a half-baked story to peddle his lies and fakery. To hide the black deeds of Karnataka where the price of diesel and petrol has been increased, he is using a fake story and peddling half-truths and full lies." He stressed that the Election Commission has already clarified that no OTP is required for unlocking EVMs. "Rahul Gandhi has pushed forward a story which says OTP is required for unlocking EVMs. Many other people from his ecosystem have also said this. The EC came out and clarified that no OTP is required for "unlocking".. EVMs are stand-alone machines. They are like calculators. There's no network connectivity, so there's no question of it being hacked," the BJP leader said. Poonawalla further questioned why Rahul Gandhi did not question EVMs in states where Congress won the polls. "Rahul Gandhi's supporters have already been told by the Supreme Court that the EVMs are fine. After opposing PM Modi, now they want to confront the democratic institutions of the country and create doubts. When surgical strikes take place, they demand proof. They create lies about Rafale, pegasus, HAL, SBI. Rahul Gandhi is a congenital liar. Is EVM okay in Telangana, Punjab, Delhi, Karnataka and Himachal?," Poonawalla added. Earlier, Elon Musk made a statement on social media, saying that Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) should be eliminated. "We should eliminate Electronic Voting Machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high," Musk said. Musk's remarks were countered by former Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar. He said that the EVMs can be architected and built right as India has done. He further called out Musk in a post on X, saying that India "would be happy to run a tutorial" for the same. "This is a huge sweeping generalization statement that implies no one can build secure digital hardware. Wrong. @elonmusk's view may apply to the US n other places - where they use regular compute platforms to build Internet-connected Voting machines," Chandrasekhar stated. (ANI)
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