Guna (Madhya Pradesh): As Congress continued to blame EVMs for its defeat in recently concluded state assembly polls, Chachoura Assembly constituency in Guna district has witnessed some peculiar events.
District election authorities had rejected counting of votes from Polling Booth No 153 in Binaganj after the number of votes in the EVM was higher than the number of voters who cast their votes.
Priyanka Penchi of the BJP had won from Chachoura by defeating senior Congress leader Laxman Singh by a margin of 61,570 votes. Singh is the younger brother of former chief minister Digvijaya Singh.
Mamta Meena, who had switched from BJP to AAp after being denied ticket stood third with 27,000 votes.
As per information, administration did not count votes from the polling station. This is probably the first incident in any assembly constituency of the state.
In the Chachoura assembly, about 1.95 lakh voters exercised their franchise. The voting percentage stood at 82, including 84% men and almost 80% women.
During counting on December 3, 2,249 voters opted for NOTA, while 405 votes were rejected.
In the counting process, votes from polling booth number 153 in Binaganj city were not counted.
Explaining the reason, returning officer Vikas Anand said that the mock poll was conducted from 5:30 am to 7 am on November 17 and the voting started at 7 am. However, the polling party forgot to delete votes cast during the mock poll. Hence mock poll votes were also included in the voting. Due to this, the number of votes in the EVM exceeded the actual number of voters who cast their votes.
Election Commission has clearly instructed that in such a situation, votes in polling booth concerned would be counted if the margin of victory or defeat was miniscule. Since the victory and defeat difference in Chanchoda Assembly was more than 60,000, there was no need to count these votes.
