EVMs are not infallible

But the voters of two booths wouldn’t have reckoned their valuable votes going waste since they were not counted at all.

In the Bangalore South constituency, an EVM developed a technical hitch that was irreparable. System engineers who were available to deal with the problem could not correct it.

Finally the engineers from the Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), the firm that built these EVMs, were called to retrieve the data but their efforts too proved futile. Finally all the 475 votes in the EVM were declared “rejected.”

Votes wasted

The booth, where the votes went waste, was in the Jayanagar assembly segment.
Election Commission sources said a similar problem had cropped up in Mandya where all the votes of a booth were wasted. The EVM could not be repaired. But since the victory margin was quite high, none of the political parties or candidates took the issue seriously.