AAP complains to EC about alleged EVM tampering

The AAP on Monday approached the Election Commission over alleged EVM tampering in Punjab and demanded that slips generated by VVPAT machines be matched with the election result.

After meeting Election Commission officials, AAP leader Raghav Chadha told reporters that the party's preliminary analysis of booth level voting pattern showed that Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) were tampered with.

"There were many polling booths where the number of votes the party received were fewer than the count of AAP supporters in the area. They (supporters) are ready to file affidavits in court stating that they voted for the AAP," Chadha said.

The Aam Aadmi Party leader said if the EVMs were tampered with, then it was a violation of the fundamental rights. He said the people were losing faith in the electoral process.

"To reinforce people's faith in electoral process, we demand that wherever VVPAT (Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail) machines were used in Punjab, the election results in those booths be tallied with the paper trail generated by EVMs," he said.

Chadha added that many developed nations in the West gave up EVMs to conduct elections by paper ballot as they believed EVMs were vulnerable to tampering.

"We hope that the Election Commission would take cognizance of the matter and would appropriately respond to our plea," he said.

After the Congress won the Punjab assembly election with 38.4 per cent vote share and the AAP got only 23.5 per cent of votes, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal alleged that EVMs may have been tampered with, resulting in 20-25 per cent of AAP votes getting transferred to the SAD-BJP alliance which got 30.5 per cent of votes.

Kejriwal had then said that there were numerous booths where his party got only "two, three or four" votes though the number of its activists and family members were in dozens.

He demanded that in 32 of the 117 constituencies where VVPAT system was installed, the results should be tallied with the paper trail generated by the EVMs.

--IANS

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