Veteran Congress leader Digvijaya Singh on Wednesday said he does not need an invitation from anyone to visit the newly-constructed temple in Ayodhya as Lord Ram resides in his heart.
Against the backdrop of some opposition parties raising doubts about the functioning of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMS), the Election Commission on Friday said no party has been able to prove that the machine could be tampered with.
Around seventy seven per cent voting was recorded in the third phase of West Bengal assembly polls in 75 seats covering Kolkata, North and South 24 Parganas districts on Wednesday.
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.
AAP alleged that EVMs are being tampered with to favour BJP.
'Money power was deployed like an army in a war.' 'None of the MVA parties had that kind of money.'
The counting of votes in three out of four states on Sunday showed that less than 1 percent of the voters exercised the 'none of the above' option in the just-concluded assembly polls, according to the election commission.
The date of the proposed challenge, an official said, would be decided after the all-party meeting.
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.
The Election Commission has decided to replace 9,30,430 EVMs purchased before 2006 as the older machines are nearing their 15-year life cycle.
'It seems that Modi ji has some hand in the EVMs'
Election Commission on Saturday invited petitioners before various courts as also political parties to prove if the Electronic Voting Machines can be tampered.
"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 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 Pune-based engineer and activist has been arrested by the city police in connection with a Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) theft case. Mukund Lagoo, a civil engineer and a human rights activist was arrested on Tuesday after two days of questioning.
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.
While the Aam Aadmi Party is contesting on four seats, the Congress has fielded candidates for the remaining three seats.
Tamenglong and Chandel districts recorded 85 per cent polling.
Nearly 68 per cent of the 3.62 crore-strong electorate today turned out to vote in Rajasthan Assembly election that witnessed stray incidents of caste violence and malfunctioning of Electronic Voting Machines.
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 Supreme Court said on Wednesday it cannot 'control the elections' or issue directions simply because doubts have been raised about the efficacy of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM), as it reserved its judgment on a clutch of petitions claiming the polling devices can be tinkered with to manipulate the results.
Rabi Ranjan Chattopadhyay, Trinamool Congress candidate from Burdwan South Assembly seat alleged that four Electronic Voting Machines of the constituency are missing on Wednesday.
The key person behind the development of the Electronic Voting Machine and an eminent writer, S Rangarajan alias Sujatha, has died.
"In the entire elections, there were massive crowds in my rallies. I did not expect such a thing will happen. I hope the next government will work better than SP government," he said.
Mann said there was no use in finding fault with EVMs and the party should introspect on the reasons behind its defeat.
'These machines are standalone devices with no external connectivity, making hacking impossible. The chip in EVMs is one-time programmable, ensuring no changes can be made. Strict security and administrative protocols further prevent any tampering'
With voter-verified paper audit trail being used on a large-scale for the first time in the country in the Mizoram Assembly polls, the Elections Commission is leaving no stone unturned to make it easily accessible to voters.
Results for some constituencies were delayed due to a process of random rechecking that the Election Commission had introduced. Counting of votes registered in an electronic voting machine usually does not take more than four hours for an assembly seat. However, the counting continued for six hours in many constituencies in Delhi.
Rejecting the contention of political parties like Bharatiya Janata Party, AIADMK and CPI(M) that electronic voting machines (EVMs) were tampered with during the Lok Sabha polls, Chief Election Commissioner Navin Chawla today said no one was able to prove it.
The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to take up for hearing on priority basis Janata Party chief Subramanian Swamy's plea to incorporate paper printouts in electronic voting machines or restore paper balloting system allegedly because EVMs "are not tamper proof."
According to the EC, no mismatch has been reported since the practice of cross-checking votes was introduced.
Bypolls in three assembly constituencies in as many states passed off peacefully on Monday with around over 70 per cent voter turnout, though some technical glitches in electronic voting machine were reported in Tamil Nadu and the ruling Trinamool Congress in West Bengal alleged that the Central Reserve Police Force was "influencing" voters.
Alex Halderman and Rop Gonggrijp, two of the three scientists who had exposed the flaws in the Election Commission's EVMs, flew in to New Delhi around 2 am on Monday and were detained immediately. After a harrowing wait for hours, the duo was let off in the evening.
Delhiites on Sunday turned out in large numbers for the Municipal Corporation polls, the first for the trifurcated civic body, with an estimated 55 to 58 per cent exercising their franchise in a peaceful exercise. The fate of 2,423 candidates, vying for 272 wards of the three civic bodies -- East, South and North -- carved out of the existing Municipal Corporation of Delhi, was sealed in Electronic Voting Machines.
The Mumbai police on Wednesday arrested Maharashtra Navnirman Sena candidate from Ghatkopar (west) Ram Kadam for allegedly assaulting policemen and election officials during polling. The police also cane-charged MNS activists who protested against Kadam's arrest. Hundreds of activists gathered when police reached Kadam's residence to arrest him on Wednesday, Vatkar said, adding that the crowd broke the windowpanes of police vans.
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.
All eyes in Uttar Pradesh were focused on Saturday when the seventh and final round of the seven-phased state assembly election would be accomplished with 1.82 crore voters deciding the political destiny of 962 candidates in 60 constituencies spread across 10 districts , largely bordering Uttarakhand and Nepal.
Anna Hazare and his team on Thursday met the Election Commission in a bid to raise the pitch for electoral reforms and demanded that the 'right to reject' option be included in electronic voting machines.Hazare, along with his close associates Santosh Hegde, Prashant Bhushan, Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi, discussed the matter for about an hour with Chief Election Commissioner S Y Qureshi. According to Team Anna, the meeting was "very useful".
A range of amusing names of poll candidates in the fray in Meghalaya assembly election is bound to make the name panel in the Electronic Voting Machines sound interesting in many constituencies on February 23.
Amid sporadic violence that left a 16-year-old boy dead and around 10 injured, nearly 77 per cent of 1.76 crore voters on Monday exercised their franchise under tight security to elect 117 members to the Punjab assembly.
