Mamata questions EVMs, urges oppn parties to unitedly demand return of ballot papers

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee raised questions on Monday over the electronic voting machines (EVMs) used in the just-concluded Lok Sabha polls and urged the opposition parties to unitedly demand the return of ballot papers in elections.

The Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo said a fact-finding committee should be constituted to find out the details about the EVMs used in the recent polls.

"We have to save the democracy. We do not want machines, we demand a return to the ballot paper system. We will start a movement and it will be initiated from Bengal," she told reporters after a meeting with her party MLAs and state ministers to review the TMC's poor show in the parliamentary polls.

"I ask all the 23 political parties in the opposition to come together and demand the return of ballot papers. We must raise our voices. Even a country like the US has banned EVMs," Banerjee said.

The fact-finding committee should find out whether the machines were programmed or not, she said, adding, "I do not accept the Lok Sabha poll results as the people's mandate."
Banerjee said, "I appeal to all opposition political parties to ensure that there be a fact-finding committee so that we can find out the exact cause of this kind of election results."
Raising questions about the voting machines, Banerjee said, "Many of the EVMs were replaced during the election without conducting mock polls on them. Who knows that the replaced EVMs were not programmed? A few lakhs of EVMs also went missing (during the polls)."