Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora on Thursday said “We will continue to use EVMs & VVPATs. We are open to any criticism & feedback from any stakeholder including political parties. At the same time, we are not going to be intimidated, bullied or coerced into giving up these and start era of ballot papers” reported by ANI.
He added, ‘I would like to make it very clear that we are not going back to the era of ballot papers’.
CEC Sunil Arora in Delhi: We will continue to use EVMs & VVPATs. We are open to any criticism & feedback from any stakeholder including political parties. At the same time, we are not going to be intimidated, bullied or coerced into giving up these and start era of ballot papers. pic.twitter.com/bco5DOSfTd
— ANI (@ANI) January 24, 2019
CEC Sunil Arora’s statement comes amidst chorus growing for conducting Lok Sabha Polls through Ballot papers. Demand for conducting Polls through Ballot Papers is on height following the claims of US-based self-proclaimed cyber expert about rigging in national elections of 2014.
Speaking in the event at New Delhi, CEC Arora while rejecting such demands said, We had one result in 2014 general elections, while have different results in the polls happened in the state assembly months after Lok Sabha 2014 including Delhi. He added We conducted elections in Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan and so on and we have seen that results have been different every time, he added while speaking in the event at New Delhi.
Arora also rubbished the claims of EVM rigging and hacking by saying, ‘the machines (EVMs) are manufactured under highly secured conditions by two PSUs, which are doing lot of hard work for the defence establishment of our country’.
Following Syed Shuja’s, BSP Supremo Mayawati voiced her opinion and had asked the Election Commission to revert to ballot papers in 2019 Lok Sabha elections to ensure free and fair polls. While Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav too voiced the sentiment saying that reliability of the EVMs had come under the question.
Earlier on Tuesday, The Election Commission of India (ECI) asked the Delhi Police to lodge an FIR against self-proclaimed cyber expert Syed Shuja, who had on Monday claimed that EVMs used for elections in India can be hacked. Election Commission of India (ECI) has written to Delhi Police requesting it to lodge an FIR & investigate properly the statement made by Syed Shuja at an event in London on Monday claiming to demonstrate EVMs used by ECI can be tampered with.
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