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! We have a page for subscribers to send letters to our shows. If you want to write to Hafta, click here.  Check out the Newslaundry store and flaunt your love for independent media.  Download the Newslaundry app. General elections are around the corner, and Newslaundry and The News Minute have ambitious plans. Click here to support us. 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 Hafta letters, recommendations, songs and references Check out our previous Hafta recommendations. Produced and recorded by Aryan Mahtta, edited by Hassan Bilal. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.