Mahua Moitra alleges over 150 EVMs malfunctioned in Bengal phase 2 polls

Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Mahua Moitra on Thursday alleged that over 150 Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) are malfunctioning since the second phase of the West Bengal elections began on Thursday

Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Mahua Moitra on Thursday alleged that over 150 Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) are malfunctioning since the second phase of the West Bengal Assembly elections began on Thursday.

Taking to Twitter, she made a snide remark towards the Election Commission of India (ECI), saying that it could have put half as much effort into ensuring no EVM glitches as it did into transferring police officials.

"More than 150 EVM machines malfunctioning since Phase II voting started this morning Wish @ECISVEEP had put half as much effort into ensuring no EVM glitches as it did into transferring police officials," tweeted Moitra.

In the second phase of the polls, a total of 30 Assembly constituencies from the districts of South 24 Parganas, Bankura, Paschim Medinipur and Purba Medinipur are heading in to vote.

Out of the 171 candidates in the fray, 152 are men and the remaining are women. It means only 11 per cent of the candidates are women.

Nandigram is all set to witness the most high-profile contest with Banerjee and Adhikari taking on each other between Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her former ministerial colleague Suvendu Adhikari, who joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) last year.

The total number of electorates in the second phase is 75,94,549. The smallest constituency is Bishnupur with 2,18,690 electorates whereas Daspur in Paschim Medinipur is the biggest constituency with 2,97,849 electorates.

The Election Commission has designated 10,620 polling stations for this phase with 8,333 primary stations and 2,287 auxiliary stations.