Alleging electoral fraud, the Congress on Monday claimed that on average 6.5% of the total votes polled in the Gujarat Assembly elections were cast in the last hour of polling. They alleged that in many seats this number went up to 11%, which is impossible, the party said.
“In the last one hour of the second round of voting in Gujarat, we saw an unprecedented rise in votes at the rate of 6.5% on average. There were seats where even 11.5% of the total votes polled were cast in the last hour. This is humanly impossible,” party spokesperson Pawan Khera said. Mr. Khera added that going by these numbers, the average speed of casting a vote was 20-30 seconds.
In the Raopura Assembly constituency in Vadodra, he said, the voting percentage was 51% at 5:00 p.m. and rose to 57.6% at 6:00 p.m., a rise of 16,000 votes spread over 281 booths. “This means 57 votes were cast in one hour in every booth,” he said, and added that some seats in Vadodara even witnessed a 10-12% increase in votes in the last one hour.
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“Nobody should be allowed to hijack the one and only weapon available to us as voters, which is our vote. We are analysing the results, going down to every booth, and will come up with remedial steps that we, as an Opposition party, have to take,” Mr. Khera said.
The party was asked why it took them four days to analyse the results. “It is not incumbent on me, or you [media]. It would not have stopped the results. We have to equip us properly before taking the next step,” he said.
“We don’t see any steps being taken on any of our complaints given to the Election Commission,” he added.
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