Omar Abdullah tells Congress to stop whinging about EVMs, accept poll results

New Delhi: Opening another point of friction with an important ally, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has dismissed the Congress party’s vehement objection to Electronic Voting Machines, and echoed the BJP’s defence — you can't accept election results when you win and then blame EVMs when you lose.

"When you get a hundred plus members of Parliament using the same EVMs, and you celebrate that as sort of a victory for your party, you can't then a few months later turn around and say... we don't like these EVMs because now the election results aren't going the way we would like them to," Abdullah told PTI in an exclusive interview on Friday.

Told that he sounded suspiciously like a BJP spokesman, Abdullah reacted with “God forbid!” He then added: "No, it's just that... what's right is right." He said he speaks based on principles rather than with partisan loyalty and cited his support for infrastructure projects like the Central Vista as an example of his independent thinking.

"Contrary to what everybody else believes, I think that what's happening with this Central Vista project in Delhi is a damn good thing. I believe constructing a new Parliament building was an excellent idea. We needed a new Parliament building. The old one had outlived its utility," he said.

He said parties should not contest elections if they do not trust the voting mechanism.

"If you have problems with the EVMs, then you should be consistent in those problems," he said while replying to a question about whether he thinks that the opposition in general and the Congress, in particular, is barking up the wrong tree by focusing on EVMs.

After its loss in the Haryana and Maharashtra Assembly polls, the Congress has expressed doubts about the EVM’s infallibility and the election outcome. It has demanded a return to the paper ballot.

Abdullah’s comments add to his National Conference party’s unhappiness with the Congress, which was allied with it during the September Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir.

NC officials have privately said that the Congress did not do its bit during the campaigning and left all the heavy lifting to them. Still, the NC won 42 seats in the 90-member Assembly, and the Congress got six.

The chief minister emphasised that electoral machines remain the same regardless of the election outcome, and parties should not use them as a convenient excuse for defeat.

"One day voters choose you, the next day they don't," he said and gave his own example of facing defeat in Lok Sabha polls while winning a majority in the September assembly polls.

"I never blamed the machines," he said.