Cong demands ballot after DUSU mishap

The Congress on Friday renewed its demand for return to ballot-paper in the upcoming Assembly and Lok Sabha elections alleging manipulation of electronic-voting machines in the Delhi University Students' Union polls.

"If the EVMs supplied for the DUSU elections can be tampered with so easily, what guarantee can be given that EVMs used in Assembly and Lok Sabha elections cannot be tampered," Ajay Maken, president of the Delhi Congress said here.

He said the EVMs used in DUSU polls were tampered with to favour the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of the RSS.

Maken demanded fresh polls for DUSU using ballot-paper and under the surveillance of CCTV cameras.

ABVP swept the DUSU elections winning three major seats — that of the president, vice president and joint secretary. NSUI, the students' wing of the Congress, could only win one seat, the post of the secretary.

The Congress leader said that whenever EVM malfunctioning was reported, the BJP ended up winning the polls and demanded that the Election Commission (EC) go back to ballot-paper voting in all the forthcoming elections in the states and the Lok Sabha polls.

He also said EVMs were provided to the Delhi University by the Electronic Corporation of India Limited, the company that supplied the machines to the EC.

After the controversy over EVMs broke out, the Delhi Chief Electoral Office issued a statement making it clear that they had not supplied the machines for the DUSU polls.

Electronic Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), which had manufactured the EVMs in question, said the machines were procured by the Delhi University long ago and were a property of the university.

Congress joint secretary in-charge of NSUI, Ruchi Gupta, claimed the data of at least seven EVMs was missing.

Gupta claimed that the NSUI was leading in the race for the post of DUSU president in the first few rounds, but suddenly the EVMs malfunctioned and the ABVP won.