'EVMs did not accept votes polled for any party other than BJP'. The BSP chief said that the results in UP and Uttarakhand were surprising and not palatable to anyone.
Months before the Haryana assembly polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party replaced its strongman Manohar Lal Khattar as chief minister with low-profile OBC leader Nayab Singh Saini, a decision that surprised many.
The challenge would be held in the first week of May and could continue for ten days.
Two days after being sworn in as Maharashtra Chief Minister, Devendra Fadnavis on Saturday took oath as an MLA along with deputy CMs Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar, while the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi boycotted the ceremony alleging EVM misuse.
The Supreme Court is scheduled to pronounce its verdict on Friday on a batch of pleas seeking complete cross-verification of votes cast using electronic voting machines (EVMs) with voter verifiable paper audit trail, or VVPAT.
Whatever happens with this election, there is going to have to be a serious rethink of how the ECI, and elections, are run in India. There can't even be the whiff of impropriety. In a country that believes in democracy, EVM rigging isn't stealing an election, it's stealing the soul of a nation, says Cleo Paskal.
To counter the doubts over the machine's reliability, the Election Commission has come out with a list of FAQs to put across its views in public domain.
The Election Commission on Tuesday asserted that EVMs used in the Lok Sabha polls are "absolutely safe" in strong rooms, dismissing allegations that the voting machines used in the elections were being switched with fresh ones ahead of counting of votes on May 23.
Election Commission on Saturday invited petitioners before various courts as also political parties to prove if the Electronic Voting Machines can be tampered.
Brisk polling was seen for the Wayanad Lok Sabha and the Chelakkara assembly seats in Kerala as they witnessed a turnout of 20.54 and 19.08 per cent, respectively, after the first three hours of voting on Wednesday.
"We had not contemplated that the alliance will fare so badly. People are not able to digest the poll results. It is against their sentiment and aspirations," Mayawati said on Thursday.
So, 11 years after the country switched to EVMs, voters in the 12 Telangana constituencies will once again be depending on paper ballots, ballot boxes and manual counting of votes in the July 27 bye-elections.
The Election Commission told the AAP chief that tampering was not possible.
Additionally, the Haryana police and home guard personnel will be deployed for security during the elections, he said.
The party raised concern over the security of Electronic Voting Machines inside strong rooms and their handling during the counting process in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, and the alleged deletion of voters in Uttar Pradesh.
The final turnout in the Maharashtra assembly polls was 66.05 percent, up from 61.1 percent in 2019, according to the Election Commission. The polling percentage for the Nanded Lok Sabha bypoll was 67.81 percent. The increase, excluding postal ballots, highlighted the EC's efforts to engage a broader electorate, the statement added. Kolhapur led with 76.63 per cent, followed by 75.26 per cent in Gadchiroli, while the lowest was in Mumbai island city at 52.07 per cent and 55.95 per cent in the metropolis' suburban district. More than 68,000 citizens aged over 85 and 12,000 individuals with disabilities cast their votes through home voting.
In a collaborative study, a team of Indian and international experts recently revealed that the electronic voting machines used in Indian elections are vulnerable to fraud. Excerpts from their report.
Over 2.5 million voters will decide the fate of 239 candidates in the fray for 26 Jammu and Kashmir assembly seats in the second phase of the election to be held in the Union territory on Wednesday.
The country has got its first firm order to export these machines to Namibia, while it is in talks with others, including Egypt and Saarc nations.
Political parties on Monday said that the Election Commission should take steps to enhance the confidence of people on use of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in polls in view of apprehensions that they could be tampered with.
'EVMs are absolutely credible, they are robust.' 'It's only a calculator with certain instructions. And the sim card inside an EVM is burnt and cannot be reprogrammed.' 'Besides, the machines are circulated among various states. No machine is allowed to remain in one state after an election.' 'By far, it is one of the finest innovations India should be proud of.'
Former Union law and commerce minister Subramaniam Swamy has written a letter to the Election Commission, demanding a paper trail to 'substantiate and verify the election results' obtained from Electronic Voting Machines.In his letter, Swamy has argued that it is possible to manipulate the EVMs, by planting a software programme that could produce an election result in favour of a particular candidate.
To clear doubts over EVMs, Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi will soon call all-party meet.
The Election Commission, however, termed the allegations 'baseless'.
Under the process, Braille symbols would be installed on the EVMs, thus visually handicapped people should not have any problem in exercising their franchise, a NIVH spokesperson said.
"If you see in the context of alliances and statistics, then this is the strongest alliance government," Modi said while addressing newly-elected MPs and leaders of the NDA from across the country following his election as leader of the ruling bloc ahead of his government's swearing-in on Sunday.
The Election Commission today said that Electronic Voting Machines cannot be tampered with, as alleged by some political parties, including the main Opposition party in Tamil Nadu, the AIADMK, and its ally, PMK.
The IMD has warned of heatwave to severe heatwave conditions in parts of West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh during the next five days.
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.
The EC has time and again rubbished allegations that EVMs can be programmed to favour any particular party.
Police registered a case against more than 200 persons from Markadwadi village and nearby areas in Maharashtra's Solapur for allegedly trying to conduct a 're-election' using ballot papers on Tuesday in an unauthorised manner, officials said.
The state police in poll-bound Maharashtra, Haryana and Arunachal Pradesh will be kept away from guarding the strong rooms where the Electronic Voting Machines will be stored after polling.
The government must develop a legally tenable mechanism in order to restore the cycle of simultaneous elections.
Dharashiv, earlier Osmanabad, is among the eight districts that comprise the state's Marathwada region, where activist Manoj Jarange has led an agitation demanding reservation for Marathas in education and government jobs.
...'hum decide karenge kaun banega mukhyamantri. This decision is not to be taken in Mumbai.'
In a statement, the EC said the presiding officer and three other officials have been placed under suspension.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Election Commission to introduce in a phased manner the paper trail in EVMs in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections saying "it is an indispensable requirement of free, fair and transparent" polls which will restore confidence of the voters.
Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar on Monday dared the opposition to share evidence of allegations that returning officers and district magistrates were influenced to vitiate the poll process so the panel could take action against them.
The BJP and Shiv Sena, which have claimed that EVMs can be tampered with, will make a presentation before the Election Commission to prove their contention.
Rediff.com's Vicky Nanjappa speaks to Satya Dosapati, an official of Save Indian Democracy, the organisation which exposed the fraud, who says that the EC's decision is alarming.
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