Election Commission refuses tallying EVMs with VVPATs

New Delhi: Opposition’s demand for verifying electronic voting machine EVM results with VVPAT slips was rejected by the Election Commission on Wednesday.

The EC refused to make any changes to the counting process as demanded by the Opposition parties yesterday, the quint reports.

The opposition parties suspect foul play and EVMs digging which has resulted in unfavorable exit poll predictions.

Opposition party leaders who have attended the meeting included senior Congress leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad, Abhishek Singhvi, Ahmed Patel and Ashok Gehlot; Telugu Desam Party’s N Chandrababu Naidu; Samajwadi Party’s Ram Gopal Yadav; CPI-M’s Sitaram Yechury and T K Rangarajan; AAP chief and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal; NCP’s Praful Patel and Majeed Memon; and DMK’s K Kanimozhi.

Trinamool Congress’ Derek O’Brien, RJD’s Manoj Jha, CPI’s S Sudhakar Reddy and D Raja, LJD’s Javed Razawa, NC’s Devender Rana and JD-S’ Kupendra Reddy also attended the meeting.

The leaders met the EC and submitted a memorandum demanding the tallying of votes of EVMs with paper trail of votes (VVPATs) of five randomly identified polling booths in an assembly segment before counting begins on Thursday.

“We told the EC that the VVPAT machines should be counted first and if there is any discrepancy, then all of them in that segment should be counted,” Azad told reporters.