Madhya Pradesh chief minister-designate Kamal Nath has said that he is not satisfied with the assembly election results, especially emanating from the Vindhya region- as the voters feedback does not commensurate with the EVMs.
Nath said that he would conduct a ‘forensic study’ of the results of the region through an independent agency. Moreover, after a detailed study, Congress veteran has concluded that EVMs were being manipulated by the officials in a systematic manner.
‘The first lot of the EVMs generally develops a snag so that political parties start demanding replacement of the machines. The EVMs that are brought for replacement are generally fixed,’ said Nath.
‘I must give election commission the credit for their efforts in free, fair and credible elections, both in Delhi and here. They were not trying to inspire or direct any wrongdoing. Whatever happened was at local level,’ said Nath.
The local administrative officers were getting calls and were being pressurized, said Nath. Another strategy for potential manipulation was during feeding the round-wise counting figures of the EVM’s. In some cases officials made subtractions and somewhere they add to the figures. That is why we demanded signed copy of every round of tabulation and announce it before uploading. The authorities were under pressure to not announce the result, said Nath.
I still think that in Vindhya the results do not commensurate with what voters say. I still have doubts over EVM in Vindhya. I have initiated a ‘forensic’ study of votes casted in Vindhya region. It would be like an exit poll, the agency would ask the voters in a survey. The study will be conducted by an independent agency.
Agency has a method of doing it in a professional manner. Congress workers will not be involved in it. People came to me from Vindhya saying whole village voted differently but the results are contrasting. Once I have that report on it I will decide on the next step.
We have to build a team of workers who understand the intricacies of EVMs. Twenty years ago when EVM was launched I did not know how the system works. VVPAT is another mess, in Satna not only EVMs were bad, more VVPATs were faulty.
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