The AAP has announced that it will hold a parallel hackathon of its own.
"The voter turnout data for the first two phases of the ongoing 2024 Lok Sabha elections published by ECI on April 30 has been published after 11 days of the first phase of polling... on April 19 and four days after second phase of polling... on April 26.
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.
The Supreme Court on Monday sought the response of the Election Commission on a plea seeking stoppage of ward-wise counting of votes on the ground that the declaration of result of every polling booth strikes at the root of right to privacy attached to voting.
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.
Madhya Pradesh assembly polls have recorded a voter turnout of 77.15 per cent, which is 1.52 per cent higher than in 2018, as per the latest data released by the Election Commission of India.
Right to Information activist Anjali Bhardwaj said the VVPAT system should be re-calibrated to be fully voter-verifiable.
Suryavanshi said the personal mobile phone of one Dinesh Gurav, the data entry operator of Jogeshwari assembly constituency, was found in the hands of an unauthorised person and action is being taken in this regard.
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.
He also said that the BJP's defeat in Faizabad seat of Ayodhya, where the Ram temple has been built, shows the wisdom of voters.
Writing his views in a separate verdict while concurring with the opinion of Justice Sanjiv Khanna, who was heading the bench, Justice Datta said the question of reverting to "paper ballot system", on facts and in the circumstances, does not and cannot arise.
Sources said the leaders during the meeting discussed the possible reasons for the "unexpected" results in Haryana and decided to set up the team to ascertain the reasons behind such results and also look into complaints of "discrepancies" in EVMs, as alleged by party candidates.
In a significant move, the 13th Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, to be held in Gujarat from January 7 to 9, might see the overseas citizen of India and person of Indian origin cards getting clubbed, External Affairs and Overseas Indian Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said on Monday.
A group of villagers in Maharashtra's Malshiras assembly segment, who had insisted on a "re-election" with ballot papers, have relented after police intervention. The villagers, who claimed the NCP (SP) candidate, Uttam Jankar, had polled less votes in their village than the BJP candidate, Ram Satpute, had planned to hold their own "repoll" on December 3. However, police warned them of legal action, and Jankar, along with police officials, had a meeting with the villagers, who ultimately decided to drop their plan. Despite this, they plan to continue their protest by other means.
A group of five people, including candidates but excluding security personnel, is allowed to take part in door-to-door campaigning.
The Election Commission has rubbished any allegations of misuse of the EVMs.
Former President A P J Abdul Kalam was among a large number of voters in several constituencies in Delhi who on Wednesday faced problems while exercising their franchise because of the malfunctioning of Electronic Voting Machines.
The term of the 15th Lok Sabha ends on May 31.
The officials said they would need around Rs 4,500 crore to buy nearly 12 lakh additional electronic voting machines and an equal number voter-verifiable paper audit trail machines.
Holding simultaneous elections to Lok Sabha and state assemblies would need at least five constitutional amendments and a large number of additional EVMs and paper-trail machines costing "thousands of crores of rupees", but will yield a huge long-term saving to the public exchequer, officials said on Friday.
If implemented after stakeholder consultations, migrant voters do not need to travel to their home district to exercise their franchise.
'For politicians, winning the next election has become more important than economic stability of the country and broader national interest.'
Babaria said he offered his resignation to the high command soon after the result of the Haryana assembly polls came out last week but no decision has been communicated to him over the matter.
The counting of votes for the high-stakes assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur will begin at 8 am.
The Supreme Court has directed the Election Commission of India (ECI) to publish details of deleted names from the voters list in Bihar, along with reasons for non-inclusion, to enhance transparency in the special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral roll.
The nodal officer for EVMs in Varanasi, a returning officer (RO) in Sonbhadra district and an additional election officer in Bareilly district have been pulled out from election duties, a day ahead of the counting of votes in UP.
Additionally, the Haryana police and home guard personnel will be deployed for security during the elections, he said.
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.
Till date, 107 elections to states and three parliamentary polls have been smoothly conducted using the EVMs.
Nationalist Congress Party legislator Shahshikant Shinde said he was witness to such a thing happening when he visited the polling booth in Navlewadi village of Koregaon tehsil in Satara district.
Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani appeared to be on the same page as Narendra Modi, a rarity since the acrimony over naming PM candidate, as he endorsed the Gujarat chief minister's view that there that there should be compulsory voting along with the 'none-of-the-above' option.
Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Delhi has been sent as a special officer to oversee the counting process in Meerut and Bihar's CEO to Varanasi.
Eyes Rs 10,000 cr revenue mark despite focusing less on manufacturing, more on system integration
"The voting percentage is likely to go upwards when reports from all polling stations are obtained as polling is scheduled till 6 pm in many constituencies. Final figures will be known on Saturday after the scrutiny of form 17A," the EC said.
The poll watchdog also said that as per laws related to elections, after the declaration of results, the only option available to verify the data of votes cast was filing an election petition before the high court concerned.
Singh has questioned the reliability of the EVMs on more than one occasion following the Congress' defeat in the recent assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.
She also said that the BJP will not be able to maintain law and order in Uttar Pradesh.
A bench headed by Chief Justice N V Ramana agreed to hear next week the EC's plea after senior advocate Vikas Singh submitted a large number of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail machines (VVPATs) are still being preserved and need to be released.
People's mandate is sacrosanct and has to be above any iota of reasonable doubt, Pranab said.
The Election Commission (EC) on Saturday came out with the constituency-wise data on the number of votes cast in the first five phases of the Lok Sabha polls and said there is a pattern in creating false narratives and mischievous designs to vitiate the electoral process.
