Alleging EVM tampering, Kejriwal wants Delhi polls postponed

New Delhi, April 3 (IANS) Alleging again that EVMs can be tampered with, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday demanded that Delhi’s civic polls should be postponed if needed to use the paper ballot.

Referring to an Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) in Madhya Pradesh found to have been manipulated, the AAP leader said the EVM had come from Uttar Pradesh and it raised questions about the BJP’s sweeping win in assembly elections in that state.

Kejriwal said all the EVMs to be used in the April 9 by-election in Madhya Pradesh had come from Govind Nagar constituency in Uttar Pradesh and demanded to know what was so special about Govind Nagar.

The Election Commission, he said, had violated its own rules that say that EVMs used in an election can’t be reused for 45 days because someone can petition against the result that would warrant an examination of the EVM.

Delhi’s civic polls are due on April 23 along with a by-election from Rajouri Garden to the Delhi assembly. Kejriwal said the EVMs to be used in Rajouri Garden too had come from Uttar Pradesh.

He said paper ballot should be used in Delhi’s civic polls to guarantee transparency.

And if the civic polls needed to be postponed to ensure the use of paper ballot, they should be postponed, he added.

Earlier, when the EVMs were defective, if a voter pressed the button for one party, the light for that would not glow. The voter would thus know the machine was faulty.

“But now the light glows correctly but the vote is recorded in the chip in favour of the BJP.

“So EVMs without VVPAT (paper trail) cannot be checked if they are defective or not.”

Kejriwal asked the Election Commission to hand over to the AAP an EVM for 72 hours. “We have experts who will check if the chip can be rewritten or not.

“The software in the chips can be changed. This is happening on a large scale.”