Hearing on a petition originally filed by the Congress candidate defeated from the Vikasnagar assembly constituency, Navprabhat, the High Court of Uttarakhand has directed the electronic voting machines used for the polls in six of the assembly constituencies should be presented before a Judicial Magistrate and sealed. Issuing notices to all the candidates victorious from these constituencies, the Election Commission of India, the State Election Commission and the returning officer, the High Court has sought a response from them within six weeks.
During the hearing on Monday, the defeated candidates from the assembly constituencies of Rajpur Road, BHEl-Ranipur, Raipur, Mussoorie, Pratapnagar, and Haridwar Rural submitted applications in the high court averring that the EVMs in their constituencies could have been tampered with. They sought that their allegation be investigated into. It is pertinent to mention here that during the hearing of the case held in the past, the applicant had complained about the possibility of tampering having been done in the Vidhan Sabha election in his constituency. The petitioner had stated that the EVMs which had been shown to have been deployed, were replaced by other EVMs without the agreement of the candidates. In order to influence the election, help of people from outside the constituency was taken and one person in advance had declared the poll result and made it viral on the social media. The petitioner had further stated that the elected candidate Munna Singh Chauhan was on the voters list from two places- a fact which he had purportedly concealed. In addition to this, the names of numerous voters in the Vidhan Sabha constituency are included in voters list from two places.
On Monday, the high court single bench of justice Sarvesh Gupta directed that the EVMs used for the polls in Rajpur Road, BHEl-Ranipur, Raipur, Mussoorie, Pratapnagar and Haridwar Rural assembly constituencies should be presented before a judicial magistrate and sealed within 48 hours. The EVMs used in Vikasnagar constituency had already been sealed following the court’s order in the past.