The EC had said it would conduct random vote counts on EVMs and VVPAT slips in one polling station in each of the 182 Assembly constituencies. Gujarat’s Chief Electoral Officer ‘admits’ some mismatch in EVMs and VVPAT slips in Gujarat, sparks controversy according to a PTI report.
Gujarat’s Chief Electoral Officer, BB Swain, first claimed that there was ‘100% match’ between the EVMs and the slips of VVPAT machines. But, the same PTI report also quoted Swain as saying that at least on four booths, there were mismatch of paper slips and votes counted on EVMs.
Swain’s confession, hidden in the body of the PTI report carried by News18, assumes significance since there have already been allegations of EVMs tampering by opposition leaders including Hardik Patel and Sanjay Nirupam.
One user Ravi Gautam posted a series of tweets asking questions on the credibility of the results announced on Monday.He wrote, “There were mismatch between EVM and VVPAT slips on 4 out of 182 seats. so more than 2% mismatch. 2% vote share is questionable. that is 6 lakhs votes.”
Swain said that they were at Vagra, Dwarka, Ankleshwar and Bhavnagar- Rural seats.
“There was a mismatch of some votes on one booth each of these four seats. This occurred because the Returning Officer must have made the same mistake but it could not be detected earlier. So we took into account VVPAT slips for these booths during the counting and resolved the issue,” he was quoted as saying.
Sabrangindia had carried screenshots of local Gujarati channels showing more votes polled than recorded voters in at least three constituencies in Gujarat.
First Published in Sabrang India
