SANJAY K. JHA New Delhi:
The Congress on Tuesday voiced suspicion about the results in Madhya Pradesh, and several Opposition leaders demanded that the parliamentary elections be held on ballot papers instead of electronic voting machines
Congress chief of Madhya Pradesh Kamal Nath said: "The results are surprising. You all know the ground reality. Some candidates met me just now and said they got only 50 votes in their own villages." Party veteran Digvijaya Singh went a step ahead, saying he had no faith in EVMs but that the Election Commission was not giving time to the Opposition parties to discuss the issue. Digvijaya tweeted the detailed results to show that postal ballots clearly indicated a mandate in favour of the Congress
Postal ballots, cast by government employees and this time also by voters above 80, usually reflect a trend in the BJP s favour. But the Congress was decisively ahead in this election, with 1,93,452 votes in their favour out of the total 3,40,354 ballots. The BJP got 1,22,809, with the rest going to other parties. The Congress led in 199 of the 230 constituen cies in postal ballots
In the final tally, it got 66 seats resonated across Opposition parties as former Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray on Tuesday dared the Modi government to hold parliamentary elections on ballot papers. A day after Shiv Sena (UBT) spokesperson Sanjay Raut described the Assembly poll results as an "EVM mandate", Thackeray said doubts in the minds of the people must be removed to protect democracy
Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav wondered why India can't discard EVMs when developed countries like the US and Japan hold elections on ballot papers and wait for results for days. "We can wait for a month," he said
BSP chief Mayawati also expressed suspicion, asserting that it was difficult to digest the results because they did not reflect the prevailing political atmosphere
Mayawati said: "It is natural for everybody to get shocked, suspicious and worried. The political ambience was entirely different and there was a fierce contest. But the results turned out to be one-sided. This is mysterious. This needs to be seriously analysed and resolved." Posting an old article on the data mismatch in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan said: "In the light of a huge lead by the Congress over the BJP in postal ballots in Madhya Pradesh, this analysis is important. The article emphatically exposed the difference between the votes polled (as per the voter turnout register) and the votes counted by EVMs in 373 constituencies. There were differences in the range of 5,000 to 20,000 votes, but the Election Commission refused to answer specific queries by the news portal." Bhushan referred to another article in The Wire which said: "The entire election machinery, from the manufacturing of EVMs to the software loaded onto them, to the committee appointed to evaluate the software, the so-called third-party auditing this software and much more, is controlled by the central government and the Election Commission has very little say. The same holds true for the pre-election security measures put in place for the machines, such as first-level checking before they are sealed in a warehouse with 24×7 security. Or the random allocation of the machines to constituencies. No officer of the Election Commission is present during any of these exercises."
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