The Aam Aadmi Party on Thursday urged the Uttar Pradesh Election Commission to use ballot papers in the ongoing municipal body elections in the state instead of Electronic Voting Machines, The Times of India reported.
“The Election Commission needs to restore people’s faith and drop EVMs in the next two phases of voting in the state,” AAP said in a letter to the poll panel, a day after voters at a polling booth in Meerut protested after one of them discovered that an EVM was recording votes only for the Bharatiya Janata Party even when a button for another party was being pressed.
“There is one common thread everywhere when it comes to complaints against the malfunctioning of the machines...the vote always goes to the ‘lotus,’” AAP leader Atishi Marlena was quoted as saying by IANS. “We demand from the Election Commission, and not the state bodies, a comprehensive probe into the matter, which is being treated like an isolated incident.”
AAP claimed that 77 incidents of malfunctioning voting machines had been registered with the Election Commission during the first phase of voting in the Uttar Pradesh municipal elections on Wednesday.
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