Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru (MS)

Bengaluru, Jul 2: Four Congress candidates who were defeated in the recently held assembly elections have approached the high court against misuse of electronic voter machines (EVM). They have blamed the EVMs as reasons for their defeats.

In the survey that was conducted before the assembly elections of Karnataka, various survey agencies projected the majority for Congress party. Some other surveys said that Congress and BJP will win almost equal number of seats. However, the election results gave an utter surprise and shock to many Congress leaders.

Even the inner circles of BJP were surprised at the victory of some of their candidates who did not have much hopes of winning.

J R Lobo, Moideen Bava, M K Somashekar and Vasu

J R Lobo, the defeated candidate, who contested from the Mangaluru South assembly constituency, was the first person to a file an application in the high court on Thursday, June 28, citing misuse of EVM as the reason for his defeat.

He was followed by M K Somashekar, the candidate of Congress, who contested from Krishnaraja constituency of Mysuru, Vasu from Chamaraja constituency and Moideen Bava, from Mangaluru North constituency, who filed their complaint on Friday, June 29. In addition, many other defeated candidates of Congress are making preparations to approach the court in this regard.

The four defeated Congress candidates who have approached high court have directly accused EVM hacking as the reason for their defeat. The issue of EVM misuse, which took a backseat for sometime has reached the high court now.

J R Lobo said, "There was no anti-incumbency factor against the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government. Though the environment in the constituency was conducive for the winning of the Congress party, the loss is really surprising. The communal polarization of the society tactic used by the opposition party might be one of the reasons for defeat. However, EVM trick proved really costly."

In the midst of these developments, C S Arun Machiah, the defeated Congress candidate of Virajpete assembly constituency, in a press conference that he conducted two days ago, said, "I have the doubt that the EVM is hacked in my constituency. So I have decided to approach the high court in this regard."

The suspected 'Modus Operandi'

The members of the hack team, who went to the polling booths on the pretext of casting vote, fixed a kind of instrument on the base of the EVM machine. There were accusations that this instrument is being controlled remotely through a blue tooth.

Arun Machiah, who mentioned the above trick in a recent press conference accused that "Twisting is done in such a way that the votes that were polled for the candidate of a particular political party are transferred to the candidate of some other political party. People who were part of this operation have gone underground for some days and are not available on mobile also. One of the professors of Kodagu was the leader of this team."

A similar accusation is done by Geeta Mahadevaprasad, the defeated Congress candidate of Gundlupet legislative constituency also.

"Recently the defeated Congress candidates conducted a meeting in Mangaluru. We have confirmed the method of hacking of EVMs by contacting the experts of a prestigious company of Japan. We have given complaints to deputy commissioner of Kodagu district and cybercrime department also to conduct an investigation with regards to the hacking of EVMs. In our complaint application, we have mentioned the names of certain individuals also. The accused should be arrested and an investigation has to be conducted," demanded Arun Machiah.

It might be recalled that on May 15, the day of the counting of votes, there was a difference in the votes that were polled in both EVM and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) in the Hubballi central legislative constituency. After the recounting was done Jagadish Shettar of BJP had won the contest by 21,306 votes.

Citing the Hubballi central vote counting issue, Vasantha Bangera, the defeated Congress candidate of Beltangady legislative constituency had directly accused that more than 20,000 votes were transferred to Jagadish Shettar that were polled in favour of the Congress candidate.

B L Shankar, vice-president of Congress also accused that religion and caste-based polling on one side and EVM hacking on the other side have taken place in the last Karnataka legislative assembly elections.