‘RIP justice’: All 6 accused in Pehlu Khan lynching case acquitted by court!

New Delhi, Jan 18: Senior advocate Indira Jaising urged the mother of Nirbhaya to pardon the men on death row who were convicted for the 2012 gang rape of her daughter.

Jaising took to Twitter to make the request shortly after Asha Devi on Friday expressed her disappointment following a Delhi court postponed the date of the execution of the four convicts.

"While I fully identify with the pain of Asha Devi I urge her to follow the example of Sonia Gandhi who forgave Nalini and said she didn't not want the death penalty for her. We are with you but against the death penalty," Jaisingh tweeted.

While I fully identify with the pain of Asha Devi I urge her to follow the example of Sonia Gandhi who forgave Nalini and said she didn’t not want the death penalty for her . We are with you but against death penalty. https://t.co/VkWNIbiaJp

— Indira Jaising (@IJaising) January 17, 2020

Asha Devi lashed out at Jaisingh suggesting pardon for the convicts. "I can't believe how Indira Jaising even dared to suggest such this. I met her many times over the years in Supreme Court, not once she asked for my wellbeing and today, she is speaking for convicts. Such people earn livelihood by supporting rapists, hence rape incidents don't stop," Asha Devi told ANI.

Nalini was arrested and convicted for her role in the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

Earlier on Friday Asha Devi had lashed out at the courts and the government stating that "the same people who had in the year 2012 gone around participating in rallies and raised slogans for women's safety are playing with the death of my daughter for their political gains. They have stopped the execution for their political gains."

The death-row convicts who were earlier slated to be executed on January 22 at 7 am are set to be hanged on February 1 at 6 am.

Asha Devi rued that the convicts got what they wished for. "I will not be satisfied until they are hanged," she added.

Four convicts, Vinay, Akshay, Pawan and Mukesh were convicted and sentenced to death for raping a 23-year-old woman in a moving bus in the national capital on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012.

The victim, who was later given the name Nirbhaya succumbed to injuries at a hospital in Singapore where she had been airlifted for medical treatment.

Bengaluru, Jun 20: Former Chief Minister and Congress Legislative Party leader Siddaramaiah has slammed BJP leader and former Congress MP and MLA H Vishwanath for blaming him for not getting MLC ticket.

Siddaramaiah said, "H Vishwanath is neither a fool nor intelligent, that's why he's blaming me for not getting ticket. He is in BJP and I'm in congress how will I influence his ticket."

He also slammed Chief Minister B. S. Yediyurappa, "Yediyurappa is toothless to speak to PM and asking for funds which need to be allotted to Karnataka including 5,049 crores, which 15th finance Commission suggested."

"No pro-people schemes must be stopped including Indira canteen, Yediyurappa thinks Indira canteen will bring good name to me that's why this government is trying to stop it," he added.

He was speaking after a protest organised at Mysuru against the hike in fuel prices.

New Delhi, Feb 20: Microsoft has begun testing its free open-source software called "ElectionGuard" in a small Wisconsin town in the US that aims to make voting more secure, verifiable and efficient.

"ElectionGuard" will enable end-to-end verification of elections, open results to third-party organisations for secure validation, and allow individual voters to confirm their votes were correctly counted.

It enables government entities, news outlets, human rights organisations or anyone else to build additional verifiers that independently can certify election results have been accurately counted and have not been altered, according to the company.

The software would create a paper trail and assure voters their votes were properly tallied.

"On Tuesday, Fulton residents are using the technology while choosing who will join the local school board and hold a seat on Wisconsin's state Supreme Court," reports CNBC.

With the test, the company aims to see if voters like the experience and make sure everything works fine.

In May last year, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced "ElectionGuard".

According to Tom Burt, Corporate Vice President, Customer Security and Trust, voting system manufacturers will be free to build ElectionGuard into their systems in a variety of ways.

"These are exciting steps that enable individual voters to confirm their vote was properly counted, and assures those voters using an ElectionGuard system of the most secure and trustworthy vote in the history of the US," Burt said in a recent blog post.

"ElectionGuard" is not intended to replace paper ballots but rather to supplement and improve systems that rely on them, and it is not designed to support internet voting.

The software provides each voter a tracker with a unique code that can be used to follow an encrypted version of the vote through the entire election process via a web portal provided by election authorities.

During the process of vote-casting, voters have an optional step that allows them to confirm that their trackers and encrypted votes accurately reflect their selections.

But once a vote is cast, neither the tracker nor any data provided through the web portal can be used to reveal the contents of the vote.

After the election is complete, the tracker codes can be used by voters to confirm that their votes were not altered or tampered with and that they were properly counted, said Microsoft.

On the security front, "ElectionGuard" uses something called homomorphic encryption - which enables mathematical procedures "like counting - to be done with fully encrypted data".