Lucknow: A day after the BJP’s big win in Uttar Pradesh municipal body elections, Samajwadi Party chief and former UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav blamed EVMs for the loss and demanded a thorough investigation into their malfunctioning.
“BJP has only won 15% seats in Ballot paper areas and 46% in EVM areas,” he tweeted, without citing any data. “Today, I am forced to say there are some issue with the EVMs. Everybody noticed that BJP won wherever EVMs were used and SP won wherever ballot papers were used. Why has this happened? This cannot be a coincidence.”
The sentiments were echoed by senior Samajwadi leader Azam Khan, who went a step further and said there was not just tampering, but setting. “There was no tampering but setting. BJP won wherever EVMs were used and SP won wherever ballot papers were used,” he said.
Naresh Uttam, SP’s state chief, said the state election commission did not follow the orders of Supreme Court to use VVPAT machines, and instead used old and faulty machines in the elections. He also claimed that BJP had not performed as well as was being projected by the party. “BJP has lost badly except winning those 14 mayoral seats, and they are spreading false propaganda of their win,” he said while addressing reporters at the party headquarters.
“The BJP has used state government machinery to win the polls. Names of the people went missing from voters’ list on a large scale and EVM malfunctioned at number of booths. Even at many places counting was not done correctly just to make sure that BJP candidate wins,” claimed party spokesperson Rajendra Chowdhary.
He said that the poll panel should take cognizance of the complaints, or people will have no faith in the commission.
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