Mumbai, Dec 13 (IANS): The Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) President Prakash Ambedkar has claimed that the Election Commission of India (ECI) remains vague on the party’s queries on how 75 lakhs votes shot up after the polling hours in the Nov. 20 Maharashtra Assembly elections on Friday.
Ambedkar said that the VBA had written a letter to the ECI’s State Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) seeking details on this, plus individual letters sent by many of the 225 party candidates who lost in the elections.
While the ECI and CEO have not responded to the queries so far, only three Returning Officers (RO) have provided evasive replies to the concerned losing VBA candidates.
“The prime question still has not evoked any response from the ECI, as to how the vote count increased by 75 lakhs after the voting closed at 6 pm that day, according to the official data provided by the ECI itself,” Ambedkar pointed out.
He recalled his letter of Dec. 6 to the State CEO S. Chockalingam raising pointed questions and seeking details of the polling data – though later the ECI issued a statement (December 10) asserting that there was no discrepancy in the counting of the VVPAT voters slips.
“The ECI said on Nov. 20th, that 75 lakhs votes were cast after 6 pm or the closing of voting hours. The ECI must provide the data on exactly how much voting took place in each of the 288 Assembly constituencies,” said Ambedkar.
Furthermore, he asked the ECI to come clear on the number of voters standing in the queues who were issued the tokens after 6 pm, along with the video footage and photographic evidence to show that the entire process was transparent.
VBA’s Chief Spokesperson Siddharth Mokle said that going by the ECI figures, on average, as many as 26,000 people had cast their votes after 6 pm on Nov. 20, which is difficult to believe unless the booth-wise figures of voting with video photos are made available.
So far, the ROs of Aurangabad West, Paranda and Nanded South Assembly constituencies have replied to the VBA candidates’ queries and the remaining around 245 are still awaited, he added.
The identical replies by the ROs said that the requisite information was sealed in the envelope of the day’s polling and deposited in the security strongroom, and hence it is not possible to divulge those details, said Ambedkar.
The VBA chief said that as per the rules, at 5.59 pm the election process must be stopped, and the door of the polling centre should be shut, but those inside the polling booths are issued tokens while those outside lose the chance to cast their votes, hence these details are pertinent to ascertain what happened.
Ambedkar said that shedding aside their political differences, the VBA will share the ROs’ replies with all the Opposition parties, but if the elections are continued in this manner, then the whole process will be rendered meaningless for democracy.
It may be recalled that VBA, Congress, Nationalist Congress Party (SP) and other parties/individuals have launched their respective campaigns against Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).
The anti-EVM drive started after the move by Markadwadi village in Solapur which shot to national prominence after its attempt to conduct a paper ballot poll on December 3 but was thwarted by the police and district administration.