Leaders of Opposition parties will meet Election Commission (EC) officials on Tuesday to urge the panel to spell out the mechanisms to address any mismatch between voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) and electronic voting machine (EVM) tallies during the counting of votes on Thursday.
Representatives of the Congress, the Nationalist Congress Party, the Telugu Desam Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Samajwadi Party, the Janata Dal(S) and the Left parties are expected to be in the delegation, said Opposition politicians who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Commission will counter-check the VVPAT and EVM tallies in five randomly selected polling stations in an Assembly segment.
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court dismissed a review petition filed by 21 Opposition parties for verification of tallies in at least 25% of the booths.
Seeks assurance
Opposition leaders earlier met the panel seeking details of what it planned to do if any discrepancy cropped up during the random counter-check. The EC at the time promised to come up with detailed guidelines.
“We had suggested that if there is a discrepancy, then the votes of the entire Assembly segment should be counter-checked with the VVPAT machines,” CPI leader D. Raja said. “The EC is yet to bring out the guidelines it promised. There are several questions and apprehensions that need to be addressed.”
CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury said that any discrepancy would raise a doubt on the integrity of the entire electoral process.
“On VVPAT and EVM tallies, the EC is yet to come out with a procedure in case there is a mismatch. Even if there is one mismatch in the VVPAT samples picked for counting and EVMs, to maintain integrity of the electoral process, all VVPATs in that Assembly segment must be counted,” Mr. Yechury said.
The delegation is likely to include Ahmed Patel and Abhishek Manu Singhvi of the Congress, Karnataka Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, Sharad Pawar of the Nationalist Congress Party, Satish Chandra Misra of the Bahujan Samaj Party, Mr. Yechury and Mr. Raja. The leaders will meet at Andhra Bhavan here before going to the Election Commission.
The Opposition parties expressed confidence that the exit polls did not reflect the actual result. The agenda of the meeting would include discussions on the way forward after the results. “Our efforts will continue,” Mr. Yechury said. “All the parties that have declared to defeat the BJP will rally together.”
