On the first day of the Lok Sabha elections 2019, Congress has already started casting aspersions on the EVMs alleging them to be faulty. The party has sent 39 complaints to the Election Commission about glitches in the functioning of some polling booths in the six Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra where the polling was underway.
In a statement issued by Maharashtra state Congress unit, the party said that it had registered 12 complaints to the Election Commission via e-mail, drawing their attention to the snags in the electronic voting machines (EVMs) experienced at some of the booths in Nagpur, eight such complaints in Chandrapur, six in Wardha and five in Ramtek.
Complaints of glitches were also sent from Yavatmal-Wasim and Gadchiroli-Chimur seats. Apart from these six constituencies, polling was also ongoing in the Bhandara-Gondia seat in Vidarbha region during the first phase of Lok Sabha polls.
Congress also sent a separate letter to apprise the state’s chief election officer about the malfunctioning of an EVM at a booth in Nagpur constituency, alleging that it was an “interference” in the conduct of free and fair polls. “You are requested to take cognisance of the matter and instruct the returning officer to address the matter immediately and take corrective steps,” state Congress legal cell’s vice chairman Vijay Pandey said in the letter.
After witnessing a string of defeats in the past, the Congress and the opposition parties have been usually coming up with the ‘EVM malfunctioning/hacking’ theory to defend their disgraceful defeats and attack the Modi government. A couple of months back, a dubious individual was seen making claims of ‘hacking’ into EVMs while Congress’ Kapil Sibal watched.
His claims were decisively dismissed and Congress had hastily covered up the embarrassment of Sibal’s presence at the presser of the person who had made tall claims without any proof.
It is also notable here that the Election Commission had invited all the political parties for an open hacking challenge to show the EVMs can be rigged. Not a single party had taken the challenge.
Congress has been blaming faults in the EVMs in order to escape the accountability of their leaders for their defeats. As soon as Congress leaders sense an imminent defeat, they start raising the familiar cry of EVM malfunctioning so that they can avoid taking up the responsibility of the loss and blame the opponents of wrongdoing.
