First count VVPATs, says Opposition; EC non-committal

A united Opposition on Tuesday demanded a reversal of the procedure adopted for counting of votes in the Lok Sabha elections and sought mandatory counting of all VVPAT slips in case of mismatch in the VVPAT-EVM tally. However, it failed to get any specific assurance from the Election Commission.

Amid videos circulating on social media about transportation of EVMs triggering allegations that the machines were replaced from strong rooms, leaders of 21 Opposition parties met the Election Commission. The leaders met twice in the afternoon — once before the meeting with the EC and a second one after this exercise — to fine-tune their strategy.

The Opposition demanded that the Election Commission reverse its procedure on counting of votes and tally the VVPAT slips with EVMs of polling booths. In case there is a mismatch, the Opposition wanted all the VVPATs be counted.

Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora was quoted by sources as saying, “When we do a blood test, we take blood from one point.” To this, Opposition leaders retorted, “When you find an issue in the blood test, you do a body scan.”

The Opposition meeting came two days after exit polls gave an overwhelming majority to the BJP-led NDA, which was dismissed by them as a ploy to justify the manipulation of EVMs stored in strong rooms.

Just before their meeting, the Opposition got a shot in its arm when former President Pranab Mukherjee issued a statement saying the onus of ensuring institutional integrity lies with the Election Commission. Sources said Singhvi read out Mukherjee’s statement during their meeting with the EC while TDP leaders showed videos on an I-Pad about controversial transportation of EVMs.

Opposition sources said they did not get any commitment from the EC and they do not expect the EC to provide them any positive response on Wednesday, a day before the counting of votes.

The meetings were attended by TDP chief and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, Congress leaders Ahmed Patel, Ghulam Nabi Azad and
Abhishek Singhvi, Trinamool Congress’ Derek O’Brien, CPM General Secretary Sitaram Yechury, CPI General Secretary S Sudhakar Reddy, CPI National Secretary
D Raja, Delhi Chief Minister and AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal, SP’s Ramgopal
Yadav and BSP’s Satish Chandra Mishra among others.

“We told the EC that the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail machines should be counted first and if there is any discrepancy, then all of them in that segment should be counted.

During elections, there were many electronic voting machines which malfunctioned and in many cases, when votes for one political party were cast, it showed votes for some other party, especially the BJP. These things we have told the EC,” Azad told reporters here after meeting EC officials.

At the meeting, sources said the Opposition was “aggressive” in tone and Azad told the EC that people sitting in that room represented 70% of the electorate.

Objections were also raised at the EC’s letter to the parties granting them time where it said it had met the leaders several times and was accommodating them.