Mumbai: Raising serious doubts over the malfunction of electronic voting machine (EVM) and the missing names of lakhs of people from the voters’ lists, political parties came together in Nashik and formed an apex committee. During the recent corporation and zilla parishad polls in Nasik, Pune and Mumbai, there were reports of EVM allegedly being hacked. Party workers plan to protest in Nashik on March 3.
Meanwhile, the apex committee is gathering detailed information about suspicious results in Nasik and it will file a petition in the Bombay high court against state election commission on March 2. The apex committee member Dr Sanjay Aparanti said, “It is a scam by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) managing election commission. In a way it is completely destroying democracy. We will take this matter to a logical end.” Ditto in Pune city. Reports appeared in local newspaper that the tally of voting numbers after counting was not matching in all the 41 wards. This is resulting in a protest likely to get bigger in coming days.
Pune Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief and MP Vandana Chavan said, “As of now we do not say that the EVMs were hacked. But the difference in numbers of voting and counting raises serious doubts. There is something wrong in it and it must be investigated by a prominent agency.”
The EVM fiasco and number mismatch in voters has hit Mumbai as well. On Tuesday, all party leaders, except the BJP came together to protest against the EVMs used for voting in Mumbai during the BMC polls. They were protests at Mulund against the state election commission and the BJP. One independent candidate Shrikant Shirsath from ward number 90, Sakinaka, got zero votes. He asked, “How can this happen. I will not get my own vote? Even my family has voted for me. It shows there is fraud in the EVM.” These Protesters are also seeking legal advice to take this battle to court. But the state election commission on Tuesday having received any complaint from any candidate till the date.
