Results to weather EVM storm today

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Results to weather EVM storm today

Thursday, 23 May 2019 | PNS | New Delhi

Results to weather EVM storm today

EC rejects demand of 22 parties to check VVPAT slips before counting

The counting of votes for the Lok Sabha polls would be held on Thursday in the shadow of a raging controversy over security of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and charges that they were being rigged. The Election Commission has rejected the demand by 22 political parties that voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) slips be matched with EVM data before counting of votes.

The grueling and bitterly fought seven-phase polls that began on April 11 concluded on May 19. Barring Jammu & Kashmir and West Bengal, voting has been largely peaceful.

Security has been tightened across all the polling stations in the county with the Home Ministry directing extra-security around sensitive constituencies.

Most of the exit polls have predicted that the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is on course to retain power for a second term, riding on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s charisma like the way he did in 2014.

However, the Opposition parties have trashed results of the exit polls, claiming that the BJP will suffer severe drubbing due to rising unemployment, farm distress and slowdown in the economy.

Around 67 per cent of the nearly 90 crore voters exercised their franchise to elect 542 members of the Lok Sabha from 8,049 contestants.

Election Commission officials said the counting of votes will begin at 8 am on Thursday and results are expected only by late evening.

For the first time in Lok Sabha polls, the EC will tally vote count on EVMs with voter verified paper audit trail slips in five polling stations in each Assembly segment of a parliamentary constituency.

It will effectively mean that out of nearly 10.3 lakh polling stations, the EVM-VVPAT matching will take place in 20,600 such stations. In case of a mismatch, the results based on paper slip count will be considered as final.

Meanwhile, a day after 22 Opposition parties claimed they don’t trust EVMs and demanded VVPAT slips be matched with EVM data before counting, the three-member EC on Wednesday rejected their demands saying there will not be any change in counting procedures.

The EC had made it clear to the parties on Tuesday that the old protocol would continue. The top officials of EC also met on Wednesday and decided to continue with counting the slips at the end.

The poll body is also learnt to have decided to count postal ballots simultaneously with electronic voting machine count due to the “sheer size” of the ballots received this time from service voters. The counting will involve the matching of VVPAT slips in five polling booths picked at random for each Assembly segment at the end of counting. As per procedure, postal ballots so far were the first to be counted.

As per EC, the exercise of counting postal ballots manually will itself take a couple of hours at least as the number of service voters stands at 18 lakh and these include personnel of the armed forces, Central police force personnel and State police personnel who are posted outside their constituencies. Diplomats and support staff posted in Indian embassies abroad are also counted as service voters. Out of the 18 lakh registered voters, 16.49 lakh have sent their postal ballots to their respective returning officers as on May 17.

Earlier, the Supreme Court had rejected Opposition’s demand for at least 50 per cent VVPAT verification saying it is “not inclined to interfere”.

The Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi had said, “We are not inclined to modify our order. (For) how many days will we hear the same matter.”

In their memorandum to the EC, the Opposition parties had said that in order to make the process more transparent, paper slips must be counted first and if there is a discrepancy with what is shown digitally on the machines, then all votes - instead of the 5 per cent the EC has decided to at present - in the Assembly segment of that parliamentary constituency should be cross-checked.

Election official cite existing orders to point out that in case there is any mismatch between electronic candidate-wise result of the Control Unit and the candidate-wise VVPAT slips manual count, recounting of the VVPAT slips of that particular VVPAT shall be conducted till the recount is tallied with the EVM count or one of the previous VVPAT slips count.

Meanwhile, Twitter was abuzz on Tuesday with several videos of EVMs being stored and moved from one unauthorised storage house to another in Uttar Pradesh. The EC, however, rejected all the allegations of mishandling of EVMs and VVPAT and maintained that all machines are safe and secure.

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