Send Assembly poll EVM to Hyderabad forensics lab: Bombay HC

Mumbai: The Bombay high court has directed Pune’s district collector to send an electronic voting machine (EVM) used in the 2014 Maharashtra state assembly elections — at booth number 185 (Parvati constituency) — to Hyderabad’s Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) before May 15 for testing to verify allegations of tampering. The court gave the order on Thursday while hearing a civil application filed by the Congress candidate, Abhay Chhajed, who had contested the poll from Parvati constituency but had lost.

Mr Chhajed said he had received fewer votes than expected from booth numbers 185 and 242, which made him suspicious. Justice Mridula Bhatkar of the Bombay high court was hearing the application. Mr Chhajed in his application stated that 89 voters from booth number 185 and 242 have given an affidavit stating that while they had voted for him, the Congress leader actually got only 69 votes from the said booth.

The court has posed several queries that need to be answered by the FSL by conducting forensic tests on the EVM machine that was used in booth number 185: Whether the enclosed program counter data in the control unit gives the same result as declared by the returning officer of the Election Commission dated 19.10.2014 at Parvati Assembly constituency; whether the EVM and its data have been accessed in any manner during the period from the date of polling and date of result.