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Opposition claims EVM rigging in recent state assembly polls

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Mayawati from Bahujan Samaj Party and Arvind Kejriwal from Aam Aadmi Party claim that EVM’s have been rigged to tamper with state election results.

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal claimed on Wednesday that rigged voting machines transferred his party’s votes to the Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party combine in Punjab, while BSP chief Mayawati said she would seek court help for a probe into “tampering” in Uttar Pradesh.  Mayawati’s claims are also supported by Akhilesh Yadav, former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and the leader of the Samajwadi Party, who fought the 2017 election in a coalition with the Indian National Congress.

The Aam Aadmi Party came second in the Punjab elections, 77 seats out of the 117 member assembly were secured by the Indian National Congress, making it the victorious party. Similarly, Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party was decimated in Punjab, getting just 19 seats in the 403 strong assembly. Following the allegations, the Election Commission reaffirmed that Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) cannot be tampered with. Union Minister, Harsimrat Kaur Badal remarked, “He (Kejriwal) has lost his mental balance so he is saying things like this. He did not say anything when AAP won 67 seats in Delhi”. Kejriwal demanded that the Election Commission count votes of verifiable paper trail-enabled EVMs to “restore credibility of the EVMs”.

In Lucknow, Mayawati repeated similar charges. The BJP’s victory smacked of “fraud”, she said, adding her party would observe 11th of every months as a black day against the “murder of democracy” by the saffron party. Within hours of the result being declared, Mayawati wrote to the EC demanding a fresh election. However, the EC dismissed Mayawati’s claims as they were not substantiated by any form of concrete proof.

Image Credits: Jansatta

Joyee Bhattacharya

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