Amid assembly polls, Digvijaya Singh suggests an alternative to EVM

Amid polling in Maharashtra and Haryana Assembly polls, Congress' Digvijay Singh has suggested an alternative to the Election Commission, which is a "reliable system of combination of EVM and Ballot Box." He has further urged all political parties to consider the option. 

In a series of tweets, Digvijaya Singh wrote, "Haryana-Maharashtra Elections 2019: Here is how EVM-VVPAT can be manipulated due to a major technical glitch. EC is aware of lacuna but continues to be silent."

Digvijaya Singh said if the CEC still insists on EVMs, then he has a request. "After pressing the button on ballot unit instead the Voter seeing the picture on the screen for 7 seconds the printer should give the Voter printed vote in his hand which he can physically put in a ballot box," he tweeted.

"Now the argument put forward by CEC would be that the counting would take a lot of time. As it stands today CEC picks up 5 booths randomly and checks the printed vote as per Supreme Court order," he added.

He went on to add, "If the voter has put the printed vote in a Ballot Box then he or the candidates or the political parties can't complain. And the time taken would be the same. So it would be a reliable system of a combination of EVM and Ballot Box."
Singh has suggested all political parties who requested CEC to do away with EVM and return to Ballot Box to consider this option for "greater reliability in our elections which would strengthen our Democracy and again call a meeting to consider this option."

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"If the number of votes in the Ballot Box doesn't match the number in the counting unit then all the polling booth votes in that constituency should be counted through Ballot Boxes and then only the result should be declared," he wrote.

Maharashtra Elections 

In Maharashtra, where the 'Mahayuti' alliance of BJP, Shiv Sena and smaller parties is against the 'Maha-agadhi' led by the Congress and the NCP. The BJP is seeking a second straight term under Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis in Maharashtra.  In the saffron alliance, BJP will be contesting on 150 seats, and Shiv Sena will fight on 124 seats in Maharashtra. Alliance partners of BJP have fielded 14 candidates on the party's lotus symbol. Meanwhile, the Congress is contesting the polls in alliance with the NCP. Both parties are contesting on 125 seats each in the 288-member Assembly and its allies on the remaining 38 seats.

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Haryana Elections

The ruling BJP is locked in a contest with the opposition Congress and the fledgling JJP for the 90 assembly seats in Haryana which has over 1.83 crore voters, including 85 lakh women and 252 transgenders, while 19,578 polling stations have been set up.

The high-voltage electioneering by the BJP saw participation of a galaxy of leaders led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his cabinet colleagues Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh, as it continued to aggressively raise the nationalism plank by focusing on scrapping of Article 370 provisions on special status to Jammu and Kashmir and targeted the opposition on national security and corruption.

(With ANI inputs) 

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