EVMs Used In 2014 Assembly Polls Were Not Tampered, States Forensics Report

In its report submitted before the Bombay High Court, the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) in Hyderabad on Tuesday denied any tampering with the electronic voting machines (EVMs) used in booth number 185 (Parvati constituency, Pune) in the state assembly elections of 2014.

As reported earlier, the court had ordered a forensic scan of the EVMs used in the 2014 assembly elections, specifically booth number 185.

Justice Mridula Bhatkar passed the order while hearing an election petition filed by one Abhay Chajed, who was the Congress candidate for the said constituency in 2014 Assembly elections and lost against BJP’s Madhuri Misal.

Chajed opposed Misal’s victory as he had “expected a lot more votes”.

On May 4, the plea was allowed and the CSFL was directed to submit a report on or before May 15.

The court had posed certain questions before the laboratory to answer.

In this report signed by the Assistant Director (Ballistics) and Assistant Director (Physics), the CFSL said the machines were working properly and could not be connected to any network either externally or internally.

The report stated: “Exhibits were forensically analysed and it was found that they are stand-alone, non-networked, One Time Programmable (OTP) Machines, which are neither computer controlled externally nor could be connected internally or to any other network. Hence it is opined that no evidence of tampering, altering or any other manipulation could be detected.”