‘No OTP needed to unlock EVM’, says Mumbai poll officer on claims made in report
The report claimed that the kin of a newly-elected Shiv Sena MP had a phone, at a counting centre, ‘used for generating OTP’ that ‘unlocked’ the voting machine.
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No one-time password is needed to unlock an Electronic Voting Machine, PTI quoted the returning officer of the Mumbai North-West Lok Sabha constituency as saying on Sunday.
The official was responding to a newspaper report claiming that the brother-in-law of Ravindra Waikar, the newly-elected MP from the constituency, had taken a phone to the vote counting centre on June 4 that was “used for generating the OTP [one-time password] that unlocked the EVM machine”.
“The EVM is a standalone system and there is no need for an OTP [one-time password] to unlock it,” PTI quoted Vandana Suryavanshi, the returning officer, as saying at a press conference. “It is not programmable and has no wireless communication capabilities.”
The police on Wednesday filed a case against Mangesh Pandilkar, Waikar’s brother-in-law, for allegedly taking a mobile phone to a counting centre on the day of the Lok Sabha election results, The Indian Express reported on Saturday.
The police booked Pandilkar under the Representation of the People Act and Section 188 of the Indian Penal Code, which pertains to disobeying official orders.
After the case against Pandilkar was filed, the police collected security camera footage from the counting centre. An inquiry reportedly showed that he did not have permission to take a phone into the area.
On Sunday, Suryavanshi said...
