Congress leader Karti Chidambaram said on Tuesday that electronic voting machines should not be blamed if a party fails to secure votes. Karti Chidambaram, the son of former Union minister P Chidambaram, made the comments on a day his party performed badly in the Bihar Assembly elections.
In a series of tweets, Karti Chidambaram batted for EVMs, saying they were “robust, accurate and dependable”. “This has always been my view,” he wrote. “I stand by it. There have been doubters of the EVM from across political parties, particularly when the results don’t go in their favour. Till now no has demonstrated scientifically their claims.”
The Congress leader said that no matter what the outcome of any election, it was time to stop attributing the defeat to the machines, and asserted that he was speaking from his own experience.
Karti Chidambaram’s tweets came hours after his own party leader Udit Raj raised concern on the reliability of the EVMs. “If the direction of satellites to Mars and Moon can be controlled from the earth, then why can’t EVM be hacked,” Raj had written in a tweet in Hindi that seems to have been deleted now.
In a separate tweet, the Congress leader wrote: “If elections were held in America with EVMs, could Trump have lost.” Raj is the Congress’ national spokesperson.
Earlier in the day, after the BJP gained a lead in the Madhya Pradesh bye-elections, Congress leader Digvijaya Singh had claimed that “selective tampering” of EVMs were being done. “EVMs are not tamper-proof, and selective tampering is done,” he said, according to ANI. “There are seats that we would have not lost in any circumstance but we did by thousands of votes. We’ll hold a meeting tomorrow and analyse the results.”
Madhya Pradesh minister Narottam Mishra had criticised Singh’s comment, and said that if he was hinting at tampering of machines then it meant that the saffron party was winning. “BJP has nothing to lose,” he said. “You should ask people who are losing. We will only gain from here onwards. I heard Digvijaya Singh’s statement.”
In Madhya Pradesh, as of 6.36 pm, BJP has won nine seats and is leading in 10, while the Congress has been able to only secure one and is leading in eight.
As vote counting for the Bihar Assembly elections are underway, the Rashtriya Janata Dal is ahead of the BJP now, winning six seats and leading in 70. The saffron party has won six and is leading in 67 seats. The majority mark to form the government is 122 in the 243-seat Bihar Assembly. Meanwhile, the Congress has won two seats, and is leading in 18.
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