‘Sweeping generalisation’: BJP counters Elon Musk over EVM remark

PTI, Jun 16, 2024, 7:33 PM IST

The BJP on Sunday accused billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk of making a “huge sweeping generalisation” by calling for eliminating EVMs, saying his views may apply to the US but not to India.

In a recent post on X, Musk had said, “We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high.”

Countering the Tesla CEO’s criticism of EVMs, BJP leader Rajeev Chandrasekhar said, “This is a huge sweeping generalization statement that implies no one can build secure digital hardware. Wrong. Elon Musk’s view may apply to the US and other places – where they use regular compute platforms to build Internet connected Voting machines.”

“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,” the former minister of state for information technology said on X.

Chandrasekhar also said EVMs can be architected and built right as India has done. “We would be happy to run a tutorial Elon,” he added.

BJP’s IT department head Amit Malviya said Musk or whoever else thinks they can hack the EVM should approach the Election Commission of India and take a shot at it.

He also took a swipe at Rahul Gandhi after the Congress leader raised Musk’s comments to flag “concerns” about electoral process.

Malviya said, “But why is Rahul Gandhi complaining about Indian democracy to Musk? What can Musk do? Or is crying before the world and demeaning India part of Congress’s DNA? We just had an election and people of India rejected this dynast for a third time in row. But he still does not get it.”