Chief Election Commissioner Achal Kumar Joti said on Sunday that the Electronic Voting Machines will have Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail in all the booths during the upcoming Gujarat Assembly elections, ANI reported. The Gujarat elections will be held in two phases on December 9 and 14, and the results will be announced on December 18.
On the Opposition’s call for the use of ballot paper after the Bharatiya Janata Party’s win in the Uttar Pradesh local body elections, Joti said that civic polls are held under the jurisdiction of the state election commission with no role of the chief election commissioner. He added that any candidate who believes that an EVM had malfunctioned could complain to the returning officer.
Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati, who in March raised doubts over the EVMs after the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, on Saturday asked the BJP to hold the 2019 Lok Sabha polls using ballot papers. Samajwadi Party spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary alleged that the BJP had misused EVMs to win 14 mayoral seats in Uttar Pradesh.
Samajwadi Party national president Akhilesh Yadav tweeted: “BJP has only won 15% seats in ballot paper areas and 46% in the EVM areas.”
The Congress, which did not make a mark in the civic polls, also said that the ruling party performed better where polls were held through EVMs. “The BJP won 14 of the 16 mayoral seats in areas where elections were held using EVMs,” said senior party leader Deepak Singh. “But, it lost most of the seats where elections was held using ballot paper.”
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