EVM issue: Kejriwal cries foul, Mayawati to move court
LUCKNOW/NEW DELHI: BSP chief Mayawati on Wednesday decided to move court over alleged tampering of EVMS in the recent Assembly polls, an issue which led Delhi chief minister and AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal to cry conspiracy.
Kejriwal also said that before 2014 Lok Sabha polls even some BJP leaders like L K Advani were not in favour of the EVMS. The move by Mayawati and the comments by Kejriwal evoked derision from the BJP and its ally SAD. As the leaders of BSP and AAP raised their pitch in questioning the reliability of the EVMS, BJP said there are “some defects” in Mayawati and not in the Electronic Voting Machines(evm). Kejriwal faced flak from BJP ally Akali Dal whose leader and Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal advised the AAP chief to go for ‘vipassana’, a style of meditation, instead of casting aspersions on the reliability of the voting machines.
BSP was decimated in the recent Assembly polls in UP where it finished a distant third winning 19 seats in the 403 -member House while the Aam Aadmi Party(aap) making a debut in Punjab bagged 20 seats in the 117-member Assembly. The ruling SAD-BJP combine was trounced in Punjab.
Mayawati said the BSP has decided to observe a ‘black day’ every month against “murder of democracy” by BJP and charged that UP victory smacked of “dishonesty” and “fraud”.
“After we did not get a proper reply from the Election Commission on our complaint lodged with them soon after the results were announced on March 11, the party has decided to go to court in this matter so as to save (the country) from such a fraud in the future and save democracy,” she said. The BSP leader was speaking to mediapersons in Lucknow ahead of addressing partymen at a review meeting on the party’s debacle. BSP had 80 MLAS in the outgoing Assembly. The BSP leader, who had alleged largescale tampering in the EVMS soon after results were announced on March 11, said that in order to hide its “dishonest victory”, BJP has now taken refuge in saying had that been the case they would have done the same in Punjab, Goa and Manipur.
Kejirwal said EVM tampering may have led to AAP’S poor showing in Punjab, alleging it could be part of a conspiracy to keep the party out of power in the state. The poll result is “beyond understanding” and raises a “big question mark” on the reliability of electronic voting machines (EVMS) as political pundits across the spectrum had “predicted a landslide” for AAP, he told a press conference in Delhi.