EC's Hackathon 'on' as planned after U'khand HC rejects stay plea: report

New Delhi: The Uttarakhand High Court on Friday evening rejected a plea seeking to stay the Election Commission's Electronic Voting Machine challenge on Saturday, according to reports.

After the verdict, the hackathon is set to proceed as scheduled. It will start at 10 am, on Saturday. So far, NCP and CPI(M) have nominated 3 representatives each for the challenge.

The Election Commission is gearing up for Saturday's hacking challenge by providing 14 randomly selected electronic voting machines (EVMs) which were used during the general and state elections in Punjab, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh to prove that EVMs cannot be tampered with, as alleged by various opposition parties.

The court had earlier asked for the voting machines used in Uttarakhand election to be hidden after the Congress leaders said that the result was staged.

The court's verdict comes after a PIL was filed by a Congressman, Dr Ramesh Pandey against EC's EVM challenge, saying that the Commission does not have the authority to conduct the event.

14 EVMs will be given to the representatives of Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) who have accepted the poll panel's challenge to prove that the machines can be rigged.

Several political parties including the Congress, and the Aam Aadmi Party had alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had tampered with the machines which resulted in the party's gigantic victory in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

AAP has also declared that it will hold a parallel hackathon of its own on Saturday.

At the Hackathon conducted by the EC, the hackers will be given five hours - from 10 am to 2 pm. They will be given four machines each, while the other machines will be kept as back up.

The challenge will consist of two parts. In the first part, the hackers will be asked to prove that EVMs used during elections in the five states including Uttar Pradesh and Punjab were manipulated.

Part two of the challenge will require the hackers to prove that the machines used in the Assembly polls were manipulated before or on the day of voting.

If the machine stops functioning as a result of its inbuilt defense mechanism, the candidate will be considered failed.