New Delhi: 'EVMs fixing can help BJP win over 400 seats'

New Delhi : Raising concerns over electronic voting machines, Congress leader Sam Pitroda on Thursday said the BJP can win more than 400 seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections if issues associated with EVMs are not "fixed".

The elections will be about deciding the destiny of India, he told PTI-Video in an interview. While the Election Commission has always dismissed apprehensions over EVMs and also held hackathons to clear any doubts, some opposition leaders, including from the Congress, have been repeatedly raising the issue of EVMs allegedly being open to manipulation.

Many in the Congress have also asserted, including after the recent assembly polls in which the party lost some key heartland states, that they trust these machines. However, the Congress and other opposition parties have been demanding 100 per cent Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) and that the slips should be given to voters rather than falling into boxes. Congress leader Pitroda also said that his recent comments on the Ram temple in Ayodhya were "twisted" and asserted that religion is a personal matter and should not be mixed with politics.

He was quoted in reports as saying it bothers him that the entire nation is hung up on the Ram temple. On Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's upcoming Manipur-to-Mumbai Bharat Nyay Yatra ahead of the polls, Pitroda said, "The next election is about the future of India. What kind of nation do we want to build." "Do you want to build a nation articulated in our Constitution which respects all religions, autonomy of our institutions, which allows our civil society to function, or do you want to build the nation based on one religion dominating?" he asked. Expressing concern over electronic voting machines (EVMs), Pitroda cited a report by NGO 'The Citizens' Commission on Elections', chaired by former Supreme Court judge Madan B Lokur, and said that the main recommendations of the report were to modify the current design of the VVPAT system to make it truly "voter-verified".