How Syed Shuja’s wild claims may have undermined the EVM-VVPAT debate forever

The idea that a man sitting in the US (or so we are told) with his hacking skills is controlling the democratic process of India and deciding its fate is fascinating, to say the least — and alarming, if there is any iota of truth in it.

It’s taken me a few days to wrap my head around what really happened. Every time I sat down to write this story, something new would take place. 

First, the Foreign Press Association distanced itself from the conference. Second, within the Indian Journalists’ Association, of which I am part, many questions were asked on the decision to give Syed Shuja a platform in the absence of concrete evidence. The president of IJA, Ashis Ray, in his statement defending his decision said: “In hindsight, we can say Ahmed [Shuja] disappointed. But that does not mean we should not have listened to him.”

Not to forget the Congress trying hard to explain the presence of Kapil Sibal at the conference, and distancing itself from any association with Shuja.

Then, a piece on FB by Lalit K Jha, chief US correspondent of PTI, brought the Congress right back into the spotlight.  

Mr Jha has claimed he was introduced to Syed (with a different surname) through a New York-based Congress politician. After several phone conversations with Syed, Mr Jha says, he decided that his claims were more in the domain of fiction, and so, he did not do a story on them, though he continued to speak to Syed over the phone. This bit gave me some peace on Shuja’s possible location. I had questioned it all along — but then again, who knows, a hacker might be able to tamper with his location too!

At the same time, Mr Jha’s account opened yet another Pandora’s Box. 

From what he recollected of the phone conversations with Shuja, said Mr Jha, most political parties seemed to have contacted him to rig elections — in all fairness, this was something Shuja said to us London journalists too. 

The timing of the event, too, is very interesting — just before the upcoming General Elections, and well after the recent Assembly elections.

The presence of Kapil Sibal at the event, and Mr Jha’s introduction to Syed through a Congress leader, as he has claimed, also tickles our bones. 

Till the time we are presented with more evidence about Mr Shuja’s claims, question marks will persist. This concern has been flagged to the IJA president.

In the meantime, there are some moments from this press conference that raise concerns for me. 

With curiosity in abundance and an open mind, on January 21, I went to attend the IJA-FPA press conference — at which ‘how electronic voting machines can be hacked’ was to be demonstrated.

We had no clue about the hacker as his identity had been kept a secret till the conference started. But instead of a demonstration, we were presented with a man whose face was not clear — sitting in a poorly lit room, joining us apparently from the US over Skype.

It was an anti-climax, to say the least — but what was to follow made for an entertaining hour, if nothing else.

Syed Shuja was introduced as a person originally from Hyderabad, who had migrated to America and worked on electronic voting machines (EVMs).

Shuja in an attempt to put us at ease — or push us to the edge — or lay the groundwork for what was to come, said: “I am also a fortune-teller. I can tell you what will happen after this press conference. First, the Election Commission of India will deny the possibility of EVM hacking. Second, the ruling party will deny their involvement in what happened since 2013 till date. Third, the Electronics Corporation of India Ltd. will deny my existence as their employee and fourth, I do not exist in any system whatsoever in India, as I was dead four and a half years ago. These are the things that will definitely happen.” 

All this, and much more, happened — but what also happened was that his claims gave politicians fodder to question the credibility of EVMs.

Only, this time, one wonders if his claims will actually serve to undermine the debate.

This much-anticipated ‘hackathon’, due to lack of evidence, is already being termed a piece of fiction.

All future debates on EVMs and VVPAT may suffer a fatal blow thanks to Shuja’s claims.

I remember asking Shuja if he also tampered with the MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh elections results — and if the Congress was among the parties that contacted him. He said, “They did. Most of the political parties did contact us to rig election results, but I am not in the business. I completely ignored the request. However, I am from the team that is trying to save democracy. They intercepted the transmission in Madhya Pradesh, they intercepted the transmission in Rajasthan, they intercepted the transmission Chhattisgarh. We managed to stop possible interchanging of data.”

Further clarifying, he said his team had managed to stop the tampering of data. Later on, in Mr Jha’s account online, we learn that Shuja these days is apparently upset with the Congress as they purportedly still owe him money.

Between then though and January 21, something must have changed, surely. 

This man who claims to be the saviour of democracy also confessed to us during the press conference that at one point in India (before 2014, when they were involved in making EVMs), they “got greedy”. Recounting the time when he and his teammates found out that EVMs were being tempered with, Shuja said, “One of our teammates, Kamal Rao, said there was money to be made in this, and we went to meet a BJP leader on May 12, 2014.”  

The meeting, Syed said, turned into a shoot-out, in which all died — but he managed to escape.

To cover up the alleged deaths of these 11 people, apparently then a ‘communal riot was organised by the BJP’.

No basis for these claims has been found. The details provided by Shuja don’t add up, either.

The last straw on the camel’s back was Shuja saying that even the Brexit vote had been rigged. When it was brought to his attention that the UK still has paper ballots which are counted in person, he unflinchingly changed the stance to ‘he thought so because of the patterns of vote’.

In fact, nothing he said stacked up — but Shuja is not the only one in this business. Political parties pretty much do the same.

This is the build-up to the May 2019 General Elections, and maybe there is a political strategy where baseless allegations and aspersions take the place of policy and development issues or report cards.

Why most of such grand claims are made on foreign soil, such as London, is another mystery that needs to be solved.

Lastly, what can the Election Commission achieve through an FIR against Shuja, when, by his own admission, he does not exist in the system and is known by many names? God knows which name we actually spoke to?  

To my mind, this is the only outcome of the press conference, though I, and many of my colleagues from other news outlets, had gone to it all ears.  

However bizarre the allegations, all we wanted was evidence.

We're still waiting for it.

Also read: Syed Shuja's grand tale of EVM hack: Unpacking the facts from the fiction