Vicky Nanjappa

There was a war between some persons and the Election Commission of India when flaws in the Electronic Voting Machine were pointed out a couple of months back. It appears that the problem continued with two persons who were also involved in exposing the flaws were detained at the airport and were even sought to be deported.

Alex Halderman who has been detained at the airport since 2 am this morning on his arrival from the United State of America says he was not too surprised. We were expecting this after Hariprasad’s arrest and we realised that this is the reward for trying to seriously expose a flaw which was according to all of us was beneficial to the country.

I cant tell you about the officials reasons because there were none. We had a valid visa on us and had applied for the same two weeks back. The immigration told us that we did not have the permission to go out and said that we need to get back.

We did ask for a reason but they refused to give us any. It is unclear why they wanted us deported in the first place and also why we were detained. I suppose it is to do with the EVM issue. Last year we discovered several flaws in the system and pointed it out. It appears to be that someone is out to harass us because of this. Otherwise why else would we be detained?

I would not say that I am entirely surprised since we were expecting some trouble after the arrest of Hariprasad. I would not say that they were friendly to us at the airport, but they were not bad either. However we have been told that we could stay two weeks and interestingly they have also told us that they are not sure if this would not happen again.

Rop Gonggrijp who was also detained at the airport also was also not given any official reasons. I was just told that there was a problem. Alex was told that he would be deported but I was not told any such thing. I was told that there was some problem after they ran through my data.

Unlike Alex I was not expecting this to happen to me. I was taken aback. However it is over as of now and we have been told that we can be here two weeks. We have some work in India hope that all will be smooth. We are however not contemplating any legal action on this front since the fact is that we have not been given the reasons for us being detained in the first place.

I suppose it is the EVM issue which has made the authorities react in this manner. This is just not done and such harassment comes in the way of exposing a real problem which we tried to do. Such things may continue to happen, but the fact is that the problem still exists and has not vanished.

Read More:
‘ECI has lied to people that EVM is fool proof’