The counting of votes for the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh polls along with six assembly and one Lok Sabha by-elections will commence at 8 am on Thursday with prohibitory orders in place around counting halls to ensure peace and tranquillity.
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.
It will be in Modi's interest to reinvent his party, read the writing on the wall that voters wrote, and move ahead. He has little choice now. The country is watching, asserts Ramesh Menon.
Arvind Kejriwal said that 20-25% of AAP's votes transferred to SAD-BJP.
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.
A day after Election Commission rejected his claim that Electronic Voting Machines are not tamper-proof, former bureaucrat Omesh Saigal on Tuesday stuck to his charge that a particular software can be used to rig the polls.
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.
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.
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.
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".
'I don't know whether on voting day there will be intimidation from some militant groups to vote for a particular person and then force them from voting for another in the stronghold of the candidate which does not favour them, or, force them not to come out for voting.' 'Anything is possible.'
The Lt Governor conveyed to the Delhi government that the rules will have to be amended for shunning the EVMs and it was not possible to make the changes as little over a month is left for the polls.
'The right to vote is the supreme right of democracy which is being executed through EVMs. No nationally or internally recognized institutions or governments have certified the EVMs as a cent per cent accurate. Despite this fact, by conducting polling using the machines in India, which is the biggest democracy in the world, the constitutional right of my vote is being violated. There is no guarantee whether my vote is cast in favour of whom I pressed the button through the EVM machine,' he said.
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.
Maharashtra Speaker Nana Patole on Tuesday said he has asked the state legislature to frame a law to give voters the option of using ballot papers besides electronic voting machines (EVMs) in the local governing bodies' and state assembly polls.
G V L Rao, part of Save India Democracy which exposed the frauds being committed through EVMs, told rediff.com that the bigger issue was that the government dragged its feet on sanctioning funds for the introduction of VVPAT despite the Supreme Court passing its order a year ago.
If implemented after stakeholder consultations, migrant voters do not need to travel to their home district to exercise their franchise.
In a post in Hindi on X, Gandhi accused the prime minister of twisting his words and said he was speaking about the power of which Modi was wearing the mask.
Responding to allegations that victory certificates were not been handed over to candidates from the opposition grand alliance by returning officers on 119 seats, the Commission said the latest figures on its website state that while 146 results have been declared and trends of 97 other seats were available.
The 94 constituencies which are going to poll on November 3 are in 17 districts: West Champaran, East Champaran, Sheohar, Sitamarhi, Madhubani, Darbhanga, Muzaffarpur, Gopalganj, Siwan, Saran, Vaishali, Samastipur, Begusarai, Khagaria, Bhagalpur, Nalanda and Patna.
Voters include 8.4 crore men, 8.23 crore women and 11,371 from third gender. There are as many as 35.67 lakh first time voters, besides 3.51 crore young voters in the age group of 20-29 years.
Former Chief Election Commissioner T S Krishnamurthy has pitched for single-phase elections and substantially curtailing public campaigning time in future polls.
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.
EC officials said over 1 crore votes were counted till around 1.30 pm out of nearly 4.16 crore votes polled in the three-phase elections.
The SC agreed to hear next week a review plea filed by 21 Opposition leaders seeking further increase in random matching of VVPAT
'The EC seems to have killed the joy of elections by stretching it interminably.' 'Imagine watching Andhadhun in a six-hour format and you will get the point,' says Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
Deputy Election Commissioner in charge of Bihar Chandra Bhushan Kumar said two-third or 2.7 crore votes of the total over 4 crore polled in electronic voting machines in the three-phase polls have been counted till 5.30 pm.
Aam Aadmi Party leader Kumar Vishwas on Sunday questioned the clean chit given to Rahul Gandhi by the Election Commission on the allegation that he had violated secrecy of voting by entering the enclosure of EVM in one of the polling booths in Amethi.
Nearly 88 per cent of voting was recorded in the one-day Tripura assembly elections, which were "largely peaceful', a senior EC official said on Friday.
The rally was addressed by BJP national general secretary Ram Madhav.
'With the Election Commission wisening up to the practice, which strikes at the very root of electoral democracy, the practitioners of cash for votes have been getting more and more ingenious,' points out Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
The Supreme Court has made it clear that random matching of VVPAT slips with EVMs will take place in five polling booths per assembly segment. Accordingly, the exercise will be held in 20,600 of the 10.35 lakh polling stations across the country.
The Congress alleged a polling booth situated in Samla village falling under the Limbdi Assembly seat of Surendranagar district was captured by some anti-social elements.
24 hours was all it took for the Congress to overturn its decision to boycott the TV debates on the exit poll results. Sudhir Bisht offers an explanation.
In the last assembly elections in 2018, the state recorded a voter turnout of 74.06 per cent. The Election Commission has set a target of at least 75 per cent turnout in each constituency this time.
Gujarat will go to polls in two phases on December 1 and 5 with the counting of votes on December 8 along with that of Himachal Pradesh, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar announced.
It's just not a date. It's just not about selecting a candidate. It's not about helping some candidate win. It's about expressing emotion, after ten years, that could reach out in India and beyond it, notes Sheela Bhatt.
The apex court said that a debate on polls reforms can only take place after the election process in the state is over.
'We want maximum voting and a healthy system. People from the whole world appreciate our system'
Bihar Chief Electoral Officer H R Srinivasa said the Election Commission has established a three-tier security system for strong rooms (housing the electronic voting machines) and the counting centres. The inner core is being guarded by the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs), then there is the Bihar Military Police (BMP) and then the district police, he told reporters.
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