I watched from my balcony and found that during the next eight hours up to 5.30 pm, not one prospective voter was seen to go to the Congress table, notes Rashme Sehgal. The rush was all around the BJP table.
The measures include an information search prompt with the Election Commission of India (@ECISVEEP) and State Election Commissions to provide reliable information around the elections, a custom emoji to encourage participation, a series of pre-bunks and debunks to tackle election-related misinformation, and a youth discussion series titled #DemocracyAdda aimed at voter literacy and civic participation among young Indians for the upcoming elections.
The poll panel had ordered for 67,000 additional paper trail units in 2015, out of which 33,500 have been supplied, according to the law ministry.
'I know people will say I am raising this issue because I have lost. There have been a lot of complaints about the electronic voting machines. There is a view that the machines were defective. 'When advanced countries like Japan and the US have discarded the use of these machines and gone back to using ballot papers, the Election Commission should take a fresh look at this,' former Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot tells Anita Katyal.
Allaying all doubts on the possibility of Electronic Voting Machine tampering, Chief Election Commissioner Navin Chawla on Tuesday said the machines used in India are stand-alone machines and cannot be manipulated.
The apex court said that a debate on polls reforms can only take place after the election process in the state is over.
India has provided 1,935 electronic voting machines to Bhutan for the country's second national elections to be held on Saturday.
Seventy-one parliamentary constituencies spread across nine states voted in the fourth phase of Lok Sabha elections.
Living up to the party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra's promise to give 40 per cent of the tickets to women candidates, the Congress fielded 148 of them, of which only one -- Congress Legislature leader Aradhana Mishra Mona -- secured victory.
After barring Assam minister Himanta Biswa Sarma from campaigning in the assembly polls for 48 hours, the Election Commission has also transferred his brother and Goalpara Superintendent of Police Sushanta Biswa Sarma from the district.
This time however, the poll panel did not share the overall polling percentage at its briefing.
Banerjee also alleged that the BJP is manipulating electronic voting machines to increase its vote share.
In a setback to the main opposition Samajwadi Party, the BJP wrested both Rampur and Azamgarh Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh.
7,06,252 people or 1.7 per cent of the voters opted for the option whereby they preferred not to vote for any candidate while exercising their democratic right.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said if the Congress had formed an alliance with the Janata Dal-Secular before the election, the results would have been different.
In the video, Scindia is heard saying, "My people of Dabra, raise your hand and make your fist to convince (state chief minister) Shivraj Singh and me, make us believe that you will press the 'hand' button on November 3."
The clearance to the proposal of "procurement of VVPAT units" was given by the Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi after a brief discussion. The EC has sought Rs 3,174 crore in all for procuring over 16 lakh paper trail machines to cover all polling stations in the country.
Did we miss the DeepState's Brazil Model in action in India in 2004 and 2009, asks Rajeev Srinivasan.
.jpg)
Returning officer of Kunkuri Assembly constituency in Chhattisgarh has served a notice on senior Congress leader and former chief minister Ajit Jogi for llegedly violating the poll code by misleading tribal voters over functioning of EVMs when they cast their vote.
He also said the Bihar chief electoral officer has already responded to everything. The EC held four press conferences on counting day on November 10 to respond to various aspects of the process, Arora pointed out.
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.
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.
When almost the entire political class was engrossed in the Bihar polls, the Congress shahzada was holidaying in a hill station. As the Bihar contest and other by-elections have shown, a large number of states have become Congress-mukt, fulfilling the Hindutva brigade's dream, notes Amulya Ganguli.
'Don't forget the BJP in the last election almost doubled its vote.' 'Even if they were not traditional BJP supporters, they were convinced about Mr Modi.' 'If the voter perceives that Mr Modi has performed well and he reinforces it, they will vote for him.' 'Otherwise, they won't.'
A voter turnout of 72.14 per cent was recorded in Assam till 5 pm on Saturday in the first phase of assembly elections in the state, the Election Commission said.
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.
Branding Trinamool Congress rebels as 'traitors' like Mir Jafar, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday took a swipe at the Bharatiya Janata Party for fielding the turncoats in the polls leaving saffron party old-timers shed tears.
Former Chief Election Commissioner T S Krishnamurthy has pitched for single-phase elections and substantially curtailing public campaigning time in future polls.
The Sikkim Democratic Front got 15 seats in the hill state, Sikkim Krantikari Morcha, which came into being in 2013, bagged 17 seats, one more than required for a majority in the 32-member assembly.
On Monday, the TMC leader had alleged that the returning officer of Nandigram did not order recounting of votes even after she demanded it as he feared for his life.
They said this was preliminary voter turnout and the final figure may cross 80 per cent as electoral fate of 301 candidates were locked in EVMs which will be opened on March 10 for counting.
Seeking to enhance secrecy of votes during counting, Election Commission proposes introduction of a new machine to prevent disclosure of voting pattern.
Over 84 lakh voters in West Bengal will decide the political fate of 283 candidates on Thursday, when 35 assembly constituencies go to polls in the eighth and final phase, amid a raging second wave of Covid-19.
The run-up to the polls, which should have been a humdrum affair, became a cause celebre after it was marred by violence, arrests, sit-ins in far-away Delhi and a Supreme Court intervention asking officials to ensure peaceful polling.
For the first time, the Election Commission will provide 'None Of The Above' option button in EVMs for the 11 crore voters who will exercise their franchise in the five states going to polls beginning next month.
Voting is being held in 59 of the total 60 seats .
Polling was held for over hundred civic bodies in Punjab on Sunday amid stray incidents of skirmishes at some places.
The Chief Election Commissioner pointed out that the exercise involved nearly 7.3 crore voters and over 1.06 lakh polling stations.
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.
In percentage terms, 1.8 per cent voters in Gujarat pressed the NOTA button on electronic voting machines in Gujarat, as against 0.9 per cent in the hill state (over 33,000 voters).
