Mumbai: Setting at rest all doubts, the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Tuesday said that no discrepancies were found in the counting of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) voting slips in the recently-concluded Maharashtra Assembly elections.
As per the ECI norms, the mandatory counting of 1,140 VVPAT slips in all 288 Assembly constituencies during the counting of votes in the Maharashtra elections was completed on November 23.
The ECI rules mandate the counting of VVPAT slips at five polling stations, picked through a lottery system, from the polling station numbers in each of the 288 Assembly segments that had voted on November 20.
At that time, representatives of the candidates were present and the purpose was to verify the number of VVPAT slips with the number of votes of each candidate in the EVMs.
Accordingly, on counting day, the polling stations were selected by mixing the numbers of five centres each in all the constituencies in the presence of the ECI observers and the counting representatives of the candidates.
“According to this process, after counting of votes in five polling stations in each Assembly constituency, no discrepancy was found anywhere between the candidate-wise number of votes in the EVMs and the candidate-wise number of slips in the VVPAT machines. Reports have been received from all 36 District Election Officers in the state of Maharashtra,” said the ECI in a statement today.
Since this exercise was carried out in the presence of the candidates’ representatives present at each counting centre, the documents confirming the completion of the relevant process were also signed by these representatives after the process was completed.
For this entire process of counting of VVPAT slips, a separate room was set up at each counting centre with special security, and the entire process was covered and filmed by CCTVs and preserved, and all the rules were strictly followed for all the 288 Assembly constituencies in the state, added the ECI.
As per the prescribed procedure of the ECI regarding counting of votes, counting of VVPAT slips for five polling stations of each constituency is mandatory, and without its completion, the counting process is not finished, nor can the winning candidate be declared.
The ECI’s statement came even as the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) allies Congress-Shiv Sena (UBT)-Nationalist Congress Party (SP), Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, Communist Party of India (Marxist), plus other smaller parties and some losing candidates from the ruling MahaYuti side have raised questions over the poll outcome.
Starting with Markadwadi village in Solapur, the MVA has demanded a return to the paper ballot voting system alleging manipulations, etc, but the ECI has rejected all such contentions.
(IANS)
