Not invited to form govt, Goa Cong registers protest with governor
a single vote. “We have got several such petitions and taken cognisance of them. We will call election commission officials and also invite experts from abroad as the chips used in the EVMs are not manufactured in India,” Sharma told HT.
EVMs were first used nationwide for the general elections in 2004 and 2009 and over 30 elections to state assemblies during the last five years. In 2009-10, the election commission invited petitioners who had gone to courts against the use of technology to “prove their charges”.
“No one could demonstrate how they could be manipulated. The commission is satisfied that EVMs are fully tamper-proof,” said an EC official.
Introduced after a prolonged political discussion, followed by administrative and technical consultations that began in 1979, EMVs have been credited by the commission with not only a shorter election process but also with reduced malpractices such as booth capturing and bogus voting. “The commission has already begun the process of introducing VVPAT machines along with the EVMs that produce a print out of the choice that the voter has made, which gets erased after a few minutes to ensure secrecy of the ballot,” the commission official said.
As for various videos that have surfaced on social media , alleging tampering of machines, EC official said that EVMs in India are standalone machines without being part of any network and with no provision for any input. Another official said the EVMs —purportedly hacked in such videos— do not use the same technology that is used in India.
An embattled Congress in Goa met the governor on Tuesday to register their anguish over not being invited to form the government despite emerging as the single largest party in the recently concluded assembly elections in the state.
“As per the established practice and procedure of the Constitution, governor is supposed to invite the single largest party to the office. As we did not receive any invitation, we wrote to the governor on Sunday (March 12). But being a holiday, the office was closed,” said Congress state president Luizhino Faleiro.
He said the Congress members told governor Mridula Sinha that the BJP should not have been invited as the Congress was the single largest party. “Moreover, they did not have any pre-poll alliance with the people they have now joined hands to prove majority,” he said.
An hour after the Supreme Court gave a nod to the swearing-in ceremony of the Manohar Parrikar-led coalition as per schedule, the state Congress leadership took the newly elected legislatures to the Raj Bhawan. Former chief minister Digambar Kamat said the purpose of the visit was just to remind the governor of the constitutional obligations.