This story is from April 12, 2019

Telangana: Congress hopes to score a 10, wants Army at strongrooms

Telangana: Congress hopes to score a 10, wants Army at strongrooms
Representative image
HYDERABAD: After the drubbing in the December assembly polls, Congress on Thursday was beaming in the hope of winning at least 10 of the total 17 Lok Sabha seats. Wary about EVMs, the party demanded that strongrooms where the EVMs would be stored till May 23 — counting day — should be manned by either Army or Central Reserve Police Force.
Party’s Bhuvanagiri candidate Komatireddy Venkat Reddy, who is optimistic about his win, told TOI that they are confident of turning the corner despite malfunctioning of EVMs.
“We came across EVM malfunctioning at 10 places where votes polled for Congress were getting accrued to the ruling TRS,” he charged. He, however, said the party would thump TRS this time.
Senior Congress leaders claimed that a large number of voters exercised franchise in favour of the party and said enthusiasm that was visible among the voters to stamp their approval for TRS in the December assembly elections was visibly missing this time.
Telangana Congress treasurer Gudur Narayana Reddy wanted access to local police prohibited at all the strongrooms and their role limited to providing basic logistic support. Recognised political parties must be permitted to deploy cadre at strongrooms. “High security network jammers should be installed at the strongrooms to protect wireless hacking of EVMs,” he demanded.
He said CCTV footage of all booths and also footage at the strongrooms till the counting day must be preserved. “All the spare EVMs which were not used in polling should be either sent to other states or sealed,” he said. Measures should be taken to ensure that EVMs remained safe, untouched and inaccessible from tampering or manipulation.
Meanwhile, AICC general secretary in charge of Telangana RC Khuntia alleged that Election Commission officials were working in favour of the ruling party and attributed the low turnout of voters to the failure of EC. “For instance, voters faced a lot of inconvenience in Nizamabad because of usage of unprecedented EVMs instead of ballot paper,” he said. He appealed to the party cadre to be vigilant till counting is taken up.
End of Article
FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA