Ahead of the announcement of poll results on May 23, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Monday asked the Election Commission to provide additional security at a counting centre in South Delhi, alleging that political opponents plan to manipulate Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).

The letter by AAP’s South Delhi candidate and spokesperson Raghav Chadha said that “he has strong reasons to believe that the political adversaries will attempt to open the strong rooms and manipulate or replace the machines as a handful of such incidents have been seen in the past”.

“Alarming as it may be, this would not be the first time that an attack on the electoral system may take place,” he said in the letter to CEC Sunil Arora.

Citing example of municipal election of 2017, he said strong rooms were violated and seals were broken in wards falling within South Delhi parliamentary constituency prior to counting of votes. 

To avoid such practices, he also requested the poll body for appointment of another independent observer.”The sole priority of the observer will be to keep a vigil eye on strong rooms and ensure safety of EVMs,” he said.

 “We request that the CRPF security at Jijabai Institute where South Delhi’s EVMs are housed be tightened. It is further requested that additional CRPF personnel may be deployed to keep watch over the strong rooms around the clocks,” he said.

He also sought strict enforcement of entry permissions. “All unnecessary movement in and around premises should be strictly forbidden,” he said in the letter.

A delegation of the AAP on May 18 had met Delhi Chief Electoral Officer to complain about the security of the strong room where EVM machines have been kept after the elections on South Delhi Lok Sabha seat on May 12.