In its continuing fight against the Election Commission, the Delhi Chief Minister on Monday lashed out at the independent body saying that it should rather “stop” conducting elections and declare the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as the “winner” right away.
“The EC should simply stop conducting this farce of an election if its sole purpose has become to ensure the BJP’s victory. They should call off all elections and declare the BJP the winner. The people of this country will not accept this and begin a struggle against this stealing of elections. The people will not tolerate the way in which the BJP is making a mockery of democracy in India,” Arvind Kejriwal said.
Kejriwal said that the EC is adamant on conducting the MCD elections using low security Generation 1 machines, brought in from Rajasthan.
“The Election Commission has found several faults in EVMs during a bypoll conducted at Dhoulpur, Rajasthan. 18 EVMs were registering votes only for the Bhartiya Janata Party, which means that that like the Bhind bypoll EVM, these machines also have been tampered with. Their software, programming has been changed by someone to ensure votes only for the BJP. The Election Commission is unwilling to even investigate the cause of this manipulation. Who is influencing these EVMs on a regular basisIJ The EC does not seem to be bothered,” he alleged.
He questioned that because the EC was “unwilling” to examine this issue, it was raising suspicion.
“The EC’s unwillingness to examine this fault raises the suspicion that the EC might be complicit in this manipulation. Is all of this being done at the behest of the ECIJ In the Bhind incident no matter which button was pressed, the BJP slips were displayed by the VVPAT machines. Despite this accident taking place in the presence of several senior officials of the EC, as well as journalists, the EC conducted an investigation into this case and gave a clean chit to the EVMs, declaring that there was no fault in the machines,” Kejriwal said
Accusing that the 18 EVMs were manipulated in Dhoulpur, the AAP Convener said this indicates that “approximately 10 percent” of the machines deployed had been “tampered” with. “What if even the rest of them were also manipulatedIJ The EC continues to maintain that the machines were ‘faulty’, but that cannot be the case, since all of them are only polling in favour of one party. “Had there been a genuine fault, the machines would have malfunctioned to record votes for different parties, and not uniformly just for one. This suggests that the machines were not faulty, their program had been altered,” EC said.
Kejriwal had earlier written to the EC demanding the paper ballot voting system in the upcoming Delhi civic polls rather than the current EVMs. However, this was rejected.
Kejriwal pressed for an investigation into the tampering saying, “Earlier a tampered machine could be caught based on which light lit up after pressing a button. In this new form of tampering, the voter will not realise that his vote has not been recorded for his choice of candidate, unless the VVPAT machine is attached to the EVM.”
While accusing the EC of “favouring” the BJP, Kejriwal said that the EC is “behaving like Dhritarashtra, wherein its only aim seems to be to ensure victory for its Duryodhana, the BJP, by hook or by crook.”
The most alarming part of this tampering is that the machines being used in Rajasthan are going to be used for conducting the MCD elections in Delhi on 23rd April, he added.
“They have found a ruse to ask for machines from Rajasthan. There are 3 generations of EVMs manufactured thus far; Generation 1 machines — manufactured before 2006, Generation 2 machines — manufactured between 2006 and 2013, Generation 3 or post 2013 manufacture machines are not being used on a large scale yet. The Generation 1 machines have been discarded and are not in use in Delhi. However, Delhi's SEC wrote to the EC saying that they want to conduct Delhi’s MCD elections using Generation 1 machines, manufactured before 2006. These machines came with no security features, and are perhaps most vulnerable to tampering. "