Mumbai: Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi had filed 31 petitions to press their demand that elections in 48 Lok Sabha elections to be cancelled and re-election should be ordered. Since the votes actually polled in EVM and counted figures did not match in all 48 Lok Sabha seats, the results declared by Returning Officer should be cancelled, Prakash Ambedkar, President of VBA demanded here in a press conference.
The VBA has filed petitions in Bombay High Court at Mumbai, Nagpur and Aurangabad benches. It has also filed a written complaint demanding cancellation of all 48 results to the Election Commission too. In case of discrepancies in actual polled votes and counted votes, the Returning Officer does not have authority to announce the results, Ambedkar pointed attention to the important rule regarding announcement of the result.
As per the analysis of actual votes polled and counted, it is now clear that in 22 seats, candidates got extra votes compared to actual votes polled. For example, In Wardha Lok Sabha seat, the total votes polled were 10,71,190 and votes counted were 10,72,570 which means 1380 extra votes were found after counting.
In Mumbai North West, 306 and Mumbai South Central 79 extra votes were found after counting. In 26 Lok Sabha seats, candidates polled less than actual votes. In Mumbai North Central, the total votes polled were 9,02,810 and votes counted were 9,01,784 which means 1,398 less votes. In Kalyan too, 1854 less votes were noticed after counting.
“The court should seek clarification about the discrepancies of votes polled and votes counted. If this discrepancies cannot be clarified, the court should order the 2019 elections as null and void and should re-order the election with due cancellation of the same. In such cases Returning,” Ambedkar said.
There was always a suspicion in political parties and in the minds of voters about the veracity and sanctity of EVM machines and its hacking till the Bombay High Court and the Supreme Court gave a verdict that EVMs can not be manipulated or hacked based on the available evidence.
“The issue is not if we should do counting of VVPAT votes, but it should be noted that if the figures of both votes polled and votes counted, are not tallying then the Election Officer has no right to declare the election results. It is mandatory that the Returning Officer abides by the rules prescribed by the Election Commission, approved by the Supreme Court resulted as guidelines. If there is any discrepancy between number of votes polled and number of votes counted then the Returning Officer should inform Election Commission,” Ambedkar argued.
“As Election Returning Officers have not followed the guidelines, the results declared by the Returning Officer (RO) violates the law and given the circumstances, therefore, the result declared by the RO is illegal in all 48 constituencies. We can easily conclude that the elected members have not actually been elected. Therefore, the certificates given to all declared candidates be withdrawn immediately. We have made this plea in the writ application in the High Courts and Supreme Court,” he added. Our second plea is that, the Supreme Court and the High Court have ruled in past that EVMs can not to be hacked.
