Guwahati, Sep 23 Opposition party Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP) on Wednesday questioned the validity of the state assembly polls held in April, after a newspaper report claimed internal differences within the Election Commission over its various decisions in recent months.
Alleging that the election result, which saw the BJP-led NDA come to power for a third successive term with a sweeping majority in this northeastern state, was a “verdict of the EVM, and not the people”, the AJP also demanded that ballot papers be brought back after discarding EVMs.
The AJP’s statement came after The Indian Express reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected at least 14 times over the last 10 months to decisions and orders concerning the SIR that, they said, were taken without their knowledge.
Their objections, according to the report, concerned several important issues, including the inclusion of new names in electoral rolls, deletion and subsequent restoration of names, and control of voter databases and information technology systems.
“After seeing this report, we are convinced that the result of the recently concluded Assam Assembly election was not the verdict of the people; it was the verdict of the EVM,” AJP president Lurinjyoti Gogoi and general secretary Jagadish Bhuyan said in a statement.
Gogoi and Bhuyan maintained that if such disagreements and objections exist within the EC itself over processes as fundamental as the preparation and revision of electoral rolls, it naturally raises questions about the transparency and credibility of the entire electoral process.
They stressed that complete transparency, accountability and public confidence must be ensured in decisions relating to electoral rolls and the electoral process.
The opposition party said that the details revealed in the newspaper’s report are not merely an issue concerning the internal functioning of the EC, but one that has significant implications for the credibility of the country’s democratic system.
They demanded that the EC publicly clarify every allegation and objection raised in the report.
Calling for comprehensive reforms in the EC in the wake of the purported internal disagreements, the AJP leaders said that, as part of such reforms, there is now a need to discontinue the EVM-based voting system and restore voting through paper ballots.
(PTI News)
