Ravi S. Singh
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, May 7
Having suffered a setback on legal front with the Supreme Court rejecting their plea for revision of its verdict on Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips counting, leaders of 21 opposition parties on Tuesday met the Election Commission (EC) and pressed for a new norm of declaration of results in case of any mismatch between EVM and paper slips.
In a joint memorandum to the EC, the leaders drew its attention to its affidavit to the apex court that there can be no variation, not even of one vote, between the EVM count and VVPAT count.
“Therefore, it is understood that in case of any variation in the EVM count and slip count it is due to tampering of EVM in that particular station,” said the leaders in their representation to the EC.
They demanded withholding declaration of results till 100 per cent counting of paper slip of VVPATs of all polling stations of that assembly segment in the parliamentary constituency concerned are counted and cross-checked in the face of any such discrepancy surfaced, anywhere in the country.
TDP president and Andhra Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, Abhishek Singhvi of Congress), D Raja (CPI) and Farooq Abduallah (NC) were among others who were part of the delegation which met the EC.
Earlier, immediately after the court’s verdict, Naidu said his party will continue to fight for the transparency of the electoral process in the country.
“To ensure free and fair election, it is absolutely critical for the EC to work transparently,” Naidu said, and questioned the election panel spending Rs 9,000 crore across the country on VVPATs for no reason.
Abduallah, who is also a signatory to the memorandum, said the thrust of the opposition party leaders is to hold free and fair election and asserted that they will take the issue to the people
from The Tribune http://bit.ly/2VV92mO
via Today’s News Headlines
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