NEW DELHI: Former Union minister
Rajeev Chandrasekhar
on Sunday strongly disagreed with Tesla CEO Elon Musk‘s statement on Electronic
Voting Machines
(
EVMs
), calling it a “huge sweeping generalisation” that holds no truth.
In a recent post on X, Elon Musk expressed his concerns about electronic voting machines, stating that they should be eliminated due to the risk of being hacked by humans or
AI
, even if the risk is small.
Chandrasekhar argued that Musk’s view may be applicable to the US and other places where regular computing platforms are used to build “Internet-connected Voting machines.” However, he emphasized that this is not the case in India, where EVMs are custom-designed, secure, and isolated from any network or media.
“This is a huge sweeping generalization statement that implies no one can build secure digital hardware. Wrong. @elonmusk’s view may apply to US n other places – where they use regular compute platforms to build Internet connected Voting machines,” former Union minister Chandrasekhar said in a post on X.
“But Indian EVMs are custom designed, secure and isolated from any network or media – No connectivity, no bluetooth, wifi, Internet. ie there is no way in. Factory programmed controllers that cannot be reprogrammed,” he added.
He further affirmed that electronic voting machines can be architected and built correctly, as India has done, and even offered to run a tutorial for Musk on the subject.
