Issuing a statement about the Phagwara viral video case, Punjab Chief Electoral Officer S Karuna Raju on Tuesday clarified that nothing wrong or out of rules had happened.
He said that it was being reported that a man on voting day was moving near Senior Secondary School Bhanoke carrying EVMs. “It is ascertained after investigations that this man was one Balwinder Kumar of Phagwara BDPO office who had been appointed in-charge of Sector-4 by Returning Officer Hoshiarpur and he had nine polling stations under him,” said Raju.
He said that Balwinder Kumar had been provided two complete sets of EVMs in a GPS-fitted car to exchange the machines in case of any discrepancy during voting at any of these nine booths. A videographer Manish Kumar was also present in the car carrying EVMs.
“To allay all apprehensions of those present at site were taken to Dispatch Centre at Guru Nanak College Sukhchainana Sahib and they were shown that on those machines it was clearly mentioned that those were reserve machines and had not been used at all,” said the CEO.
Raju said that a similar case had been reported in Jalandhar too in which it had been allegedly said that some people with laptops had entered the counting centre. “In this case too, it has been found that those persons were the members of counting staff and had come to take part in training,” said Raju while urging the people to not spread false information on social media.