Hours after the press meet organised by Indian Journalists Association (IJA) ended in London, Hyderabad went into a tizzy. The reason: the self-proclaimed EVM expert with the pseudonym Syed Shuja said he was from Hyderabad and worked at the ECIL (Electronics Corporation of India Limited). Using a mask to hide his identity, Shuja made one bizarre claim after the other on live video, completely skipping the most-awaited part—demonstrating the act of hacking an EVM. According to him, he was part of the engineering team that worked on EVMs. But, sources at the ECIL told THE WEEK that Shuja was not a former employee, and rubbished his claims. However, they are yet to put out an official statement.
The ECIL has close to 2,200 employees, out of which 80 per cent are engineers. A team of mostly young engineers work on EVMs. According to the ECIL source, they are not aware of any engineer who worked on EVMs and later relocated to the US under the circumstances claimed by Shuja. “This is just a false story,” said one senior ECIL source, who is aware of the developments.
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Syed Shuja alleged that the BJP manipulated EVMs in the 2014 elections. THE WEEK performed a quick check with some of the active members of the local hacking community; none of them were aware of the existence of such a person. Digital activists, who have been raising issues related to the EVMs, rejected his claims. “This is utter rubbish and not backed by any scientific reason,” said Srinivas Kodali, who has taken on Aadhaar and UIDAI on the issue of privacy. Hyderabad-based IT activist and general secretary of the Free Software Movement, Kiran Chandra, who closely followed the press conference, said, “Our team has done a technical evaluation of all his claims. It belittles the resistance built by people like us,” he said. Kiran has been voicing concerns about the EVMs since 2004. His organisation has demanded that the Election Commission release the specifications of the EVMs, so that there is no scope for speculations on its possible manipulation.
“Any electronic circuit can be hacked. But, this is different from EVMs being hacked during elections,” he said, “His claims are technically flawed. If one were to go by his version, using military radio frequency, an antennae of several kilometres length has to be used to communicate with the EVMs. From whatever he said, it is theoretically implied that the data was transmitted at 100 bits per second to hack the EVMs. With that speed, it would take generations to hack 1.1 million EVMs.”
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Chandra also said that Shuja’s claims on Delhi elections in 2015 were “ridiculous”. “He claimed that he reversed the results during Delhi elections [which had ultimately resulted in a landslide for the Aam Aadmi Party]. His explanation was that he jammed the signals sent by the BJP, and instead sent his own. How is this technically possible?” he questioned. Shuja also said that he had sought asylum in the US after he was attacked in the aftermath of the 2014 elections, and some of his teammates were killed in a “fake” communal riot. He accused former BJP MLA Kishan Reddy of murdering close to 11 of his accomplices, and then orchestrating a Sikh-Muslim riot in Kishanbagh to show that they were killed in an ‘encounter’. The reality was that a communal incident took place in Kishanbagh in mid-May in which only three people were killed during police firing, and almost all of them were locals with petty jobs. There were also eyewitnesses to this incident which debunks Shuja's version. Refuting the allegations against him, Kishan Reddy said that he can never harm anyone, nor is tech-savvy to hack EVMs. He said that he had no role in the communal incident that took place in Kishanbagh and pointed out that it was the Congress government which was still in power at that time.
According to the Telangana police, there have not been any communal incidents after that in which multiple lives were claimed. Shuja also claimed that he was shot at, which prompted him to leave the country. None of these allegations could be verified.