This week, Newslaundry’s Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande, and Anand Vardhan are joined by political analyst Suhas Palshikar, tech expert Madhav Deshpande, and professor Shruti Kapila.

On the robustness of the election voting machines, Suhas Palshikar says EVMs have “definitely lost the credibility that they initially had”. He cites Lokniti-CSDS data. Madhav says “major technological change” in 2013, with the introduction of VVPAT has made EVMs a “different beast”.  

The panel then discusses the manifestos and poll promises. Shruti says the BJP manifesto is “very weird” and that “it wants to lower the temperature on Hindutva”. Anand calls it the manifesto of a party that is “very sure of a renewed mandate”, unlike the Congress manifesto, which is trying to “tick too many boxes”. 

This and a whole lot more. Tune in!

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Timecodes

00:00:00 - 00:05:02 - Headlines

00:05:03 - 00:13:16 - Trust deficit in EVMs 

00:13:17 - 00:53:24 - BJP’s manifesto

00:53:25 - 01:28:36 - Letters 

01:28:37 - 01:34:00 - Recommendations

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Produced and recorded by Aryan Mahtta, edited by Hassan Bilal.

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