SHILLONG, Feb 18: A man has been arrested in West Garo Hills district for allegedly sharing a video on social media which purportedly showed that any button pressed on an EVM leads to a vote in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Informing this on Saturday, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) FR Kharkongor said that a case was filed against the man, identified as Bolong R Sangma, under IPC section 171G, which deals with false statements in connection with an election.
EVMs or electronic voting machines are tamper-proof and go to factory reset mode if any manipulation is attempted, Kharkongor said, adding that numerous safeguards are present at every level.
It may be mentioned that Sangma on February 16 shared a clip, alleging that EVMs were manipulated.
Sangma was arrested after the Returning Officer of Rongjeng assembly constituency filed a police complaint.
Abstain from disseminating misinformation: EGH DC
Meanwhile, stating that the video is false and baseless, East Garo Hills Deputy Commissioner Swapnil Tembe has asked the general public not to spread misinformation.
According to the DC, the EVMs are highly secured machines and there are several checks in place to ensure that they are built, repaired and always stored in secure locations.
“During the run-up to the elections wide demonstrations on EVMs has been made in all constituencies and in the market places for people to experience the voting procedure and microchips used in EVMs are one-time programmable or masked chips which can neither be read or overwritten and hence, the program used in the EVMs cannot be reprogrammed in a particular manner,” he said.
“The EVMs are stand-alone machines which are not accessible remotely from any network connected with any external device and there are no operating systems used in these machines and hence, there is no chance of programming the EVMs in a particular way to select any particular candidate or political party,” the DC added. (With PTI inputs)