NEW DELHI: Rejecting the Congress’ allegations after the Haryana assembly poll results, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar on Tuesday said after the EVM tampering row, questions are being raised on the strength of battery charge and wondered what next accusation would come. Addressing a press conference here to announce the poll schedule for Jharkhand and Maharashtra assemblies, Kumar, while referring to the allegations of the Congress of tampering of EVMs in some Haryana seats where machines with varying battery strength gave out different results, said earlier allegations of hacking were made “but this has come up for the first time”.“Now we are thinking what will come next, we can’t fathom. But certainly something new will come up,” he added. He asserted that around six days prior to the poll day, EVMs are commissioned and election symbols of candidates are loaded and a new battery is installed, which has the signatures of candidates or their authorised agents.“Leave alone EVM, even batteries (installed) have signatures of candidates. Even we were not aware (of this rule) as it was framed long back. Now it is helping us,” the CEC said responding to a series of questions on the reliability of the machines and concerns flagged on battery.Kumar also said that people ask if pagers can be used to blow up people in some countries, why can’t EVMs be hacked? “Pagers are connected (to the network), EVMs are not,” he asserted.Pagers sold to Hezbollah and Lebanese officials had exploded recently, triggering claims that their batteries were rigged with explosives.
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