More than 50,000 officials have been deployed for the counting of votes on Thursday in the five states where assembly polls were held recently.
'This means the remedy will be worse than the disease. The thing which you want to avoid will happen.'
The EC currently follows a system of random counting of VVPAT slips in one polling booth per assembly segment of a Parliamentary or assembly constituency.
Major opposition parties met President Pranab Mukherjee on Wednesday and put forth their concerns over recent incidents of violence, including attacks by cow vigilantes, and attempts to "muzzle voices of dissent".
Leaders of 22 political parties had on Tuesday urged the poll panel to ensure paper slips from the VVPAT module are matched before the counting begins so that in cases of discrepancy, all votes in that particular assembly segment can be cross-checked with the paper slips.
The main opposition Telugu Desam party has stepped up its opposition to the use of Electronic Voting Machines saying they were vulnerable to the manipulation and the people did not have confidence in the machines after the non governmental organizations exposed their unreliability.
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to entertain a Public Interest Litigation, questioning the functioning of Electronic Voting Machines and seeking a direction to the Election Commission to withhold using them till the machines are made tamper proof.
A lacklustre show by the Congress in Bihar seems to have proved costly for the opposition grand alliance, as it dragged down the RJD too from government formation in the Hindi heartland state.
AI implementation enabler Staqu will deploy its proprietary video analytics system JARVIS to count votes directly from the camera by monitoring the electronic voting machines screens at the counting centre.
The five-state assembly elections are seen as a now-or-never, no-holds battle for the Congress, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Haven't you heard of the magical EVM machines? They can negate all our votes.' 'There is no hope. Modi is India's Putin.'
70 per cent voting was recorded across 18 constituencies of Bastar and Rajnandgaon till 3 pm in the first phase of assembly election in Chhattisgarh, where violence by Naxals who have called for a poll boycott left a Central Reserve Police Force jawan dead.
Addressing a press conference in London via Skype, the man, identified as Syed Shuja, said the BJP would have won Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh elections if his team hadn't intercepted the BJP attempts to hack the transmissions in these states.
An average 59.24 per cent voter turnout was recorded as of 5 pm on Thursday across 89 assembly seats in the first phase of Gujarat elections, officials said.
Rediff.com's Bikash Mohapatra, who is in the US to cover the presidential election, finds out that the American voter does not really trust the electronic voting machine.
Jammu and Kashmir has been without an assembly since November 2018 when the then legislative assembly was dissolved by then Governor Satya Pal Malik after the People's Democratic Party-Bharatiya Janata Party coalition government fell apart earlier that year.
This time however, the poll panel did not share the overall polling percentage at its briefing.
Mian Javed Latif said a decision on PML-N supremo and the three-time prime minister Sharif's anticipated return will be discussed with the coalition partners.
India has provided 1,935 electronic voting machines to Bhutan for the country's second national elections to be held on Saturday.
The poll watchdog faces two Heruclean tasks -- to produce over a million VVPATs in time for the 2019 elections and also iron out manufacturing tweaks in the machines which are already in use.
The ruling AAP is going into the Delhi election with the hope to repeat its stellar performance of the last assembly polls, while the BJP, which bagged all seven seats here in the Lok Sabha election, will be aiming at expanding its vote share in the
The bypolls were conducted for two Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh, one each in Meghalaya and Odisha and the Jalandhar Lok Sabha constituency in Punjab.
Guidelines have been issued by the Commission for safe conduct of the electoral exercise in the midst of the raging COVID-19 pandemic. These guidelines include lowering the maximum number of voters for a polling booth from 1,600 to 1,000, staggering the polling hours and extending postal ballot facility to those above 80.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav lashed out at his one-time ally, the Congress, and said that in the state the BJP is nowhere.
EC officials said the counting of votes for the Lok Sabha elections will begin at 8 am on Thursday and results are expected only by late evening.
The Election Commission on Saturday gave a clean chit to Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on the allegation that he had violated secrecy of voting by entering the enclosure of the Electronic Voting Machine in one of the polling booths in Amethi on May 7.
J Alex Halderman, leading electronic voting security expert tells Vicky Nanjappa what the problems with India's voting machines are and how to fix them.
Strong rooms spread across the city storing the electronic voting machines (EVMs) are being heavily guarded, with a 'three-layer security ring'. Tight security arrangements have also been put in place at various centres across the national capital.
Voting will be held on Thursday for the first phase of Gujarat Assembly elections in 89 seats spread across 19 districts in Saurashtra-Kutch and southern parts of the state where 788 candidates are in the fray.
Total 171 votes were cast in a booth in Assam's Dima Hasao district, even though 90 people were eligible to exercise their franchise, officials said on Monday, revealing a massive irregularity.
A total of 833 candidates from 61 political parties, including Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel of the Bharatiya Janata Party, are contesting the polls in these assembly segments spread across Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Gandhinagar and other districts.
The apex court said that a debate on polls reforms can only take place after the election process in the state is over.
The BJP stormed back to power in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, trouncing its main rival SP, with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asserting that people have buried the politics of caste and religion.
The Delhi High Court on Wednesday asked the Election Commission to inform it whether a system incorporating ballot papers with Electronic Voting Machines was possible to implement during elections.Acting on a petition filed by Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy, a division bench of Chief Justice A P Shah and Justice Manmohan directed the EC's counsel to file an affidavit in this regard by October 21.
Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani on Sunday found support from rivals Communist party of India - Marxist, Janata Dal - Secular and Lok Janshakti Party for his suggestion for the re-introduction of ballot papers in place of Electronic Voting Machines.Advani has not cast any doubts on the results of the Lok Sabha elections but feels the country should revert to ballot papers, starting with the Maharashtra assembly elections in October and some more states later.
The chief minister has lost her cool twice in the last few weeks over people chanting 'Jai Sri Ram' at some places in the state while her motorcade was passing through.
Sporadic incidents of violence were reported from various places that went to polls on Saturday during the first phase of the West Bengal assembly election, even as the overall poll situation was largely peaceful with 79.79 per cent turnout recorded till the end of voting, an official said.
Nearly 4,800 elected MPs and MLAs will vote on Monday to elect the 15th President of India, with National Democratic Alliance candidate Droupadi Murmu having a clear edge over Opposition's Yashwant Sinha as over 60 per cent votes are expected to be cast in her favour.
The Delhi high court on Tuesday refused to issue directions to the Election Commission on Janata Party chief Subramanian Swamy's plea that either paper printouts be incorporated in EVMs or paper ballot be brought back as the electronic machines were "not tamper-proof".
The CEC said 7.2 crore single-use gloves for voters to press electronic voting machine buttons, more than seven lakh units of hand sanitiser, about 46 lakh masks, about six lakh personal protection equipment (PPE) kits, 7.6 lakh units of face shields have been arranged.
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