Uttam slams EC for not counting VVPAT slips Hyderabad, Dec 11 (INN): Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) President Capt. N. Uttam Kumar Reddy on Tuesday alleged that the TRS has won the elections only due to tampering of EVMs in the elections.
Addressing a press conference at Gandhi Bhavan while the counting of votes was still on, Uttam Kumar Reddy said that the people have a strong suspicion that EVMs have been tampered at a large scale to turn the results in favour of TRS. He said that the Congress party has approached the Election Commission of India and also Chief Electoral Officer Rajat Kumar demanding that the VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail) slips be counted to get the genuine results. However, he said that the EC was reluctant to count the VVPAT slips. He said that the authorities should have any objection to counting of VVPAT slips if there were no irregularities. He said that the Congress party would explore the legal options in this regard.
Uttam Kumar Reddy said that the Election Commission of India had failed to hold the elections in a free, fair and transparent manner in the state. He said right from changing the schedule for summary revision of electoral rolls on September 6, the Election Commission has been favouring the ruling TRS in one way or the other.
'We have asked the Election Commission to also count VVPAT slips. If it failed to do so, it will be a Black Day for democracy in the State. I wonder if the purpose of VVPAT is not to count them, then it is of no use to EVMs in the elections. Majority of the political parties are demanding the counting of the slips. But, the election commission is not listening to them,' he said.
Uttam Kumar Reddy cited examples of many constituencies where the number of polled votes did not match with the figures in EVMs.
News Posted: 11 December, 2018
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