A former civil servant has raised questions about the claims by the Election Commission of India (ECI) that the electronic voting machines (EVMs) can’t be rigged or hacked.

Omesh Saigal, who has served as Chief Secretary of Delhi and retired as Secretary to Government of India, had written to Chief Election Commissioner Navin Chawla, claiming that a detailed study conducted by him with the help of information technology experts had shown that rigging of EVMs is “possible and plausible”.

When contacted, Saigal told The Indian Express that he met Chawla on Wednesday to explain the methodology adopted by him for the study and its results.

“It is an important issue as the fate of this country’s democratic set-up hinges on the fairness of the elections. There shouldn’t be an iota of doubt about the same,” he said.

Saigal also cited a study conducted by the Johns Hopkins University and Rice University, which established that if one gets to know the source code of an EVM, it is possible for a single person to cast unlimited ballots without detection.

“To see if a similar fraud could be done in India, on my request a young programmer wrote a very simple programme which could skew the result if a pre-programmed code number was keyed in. A mock poll showed that every 5th vote after the first 10 would go in favour of a particular candidate. This poll was conducted in the presence of some eminent people, whose names have also been sent to the CEC. I intend to conduct this poll before the EC,” Saigal said.