The State election authority has permitted, with certain conditions, representatives of the political parties to keep vigil on the strong rooms where the electronic voting machines have been kept.
The Congress immediately wrested the opportunity and deployed vigilance teams to some constituencies, including Gajwel and Medak. These teams would stay put in makeshift tents, keeping round-the-clock watch on the strong rooms till the counting gets under way at 8 am on Tuesday.
The permission to political parties to deploy their vigilance teams at the strong rooms was given by Chief Electoral Officer Rajat Kumar on the basis of a representation by Congress spokesperson Gudur Narayan Reddy who, in a late night representation to the former on Saturday, had expressed fears of tampering of EVMs at the strong rooms. Mr. Rajat Kumar contacted the Election Commission and gave the go-ahead.
As per the permission, political parties would be allowed to be present in the respective areas if they maintained the norms like not venturing into the police cordon that would constantly monitor the premises. The election authority has set up a three-layered police security, in addition to installing CCTV camera network at the strong rooms as well as the counting centres that have been selected for the purpose.
Senior officials said the guidelines framed by the EC from time to time allowed the presence of the political parties provided certain safeguards were followed. The election authorities are engaging the political parties in several aspects of pre- and post-poll arrangements like despatch and receipt of EVMs and voter verifiable paper audit trail machines.
The commission had put in place a mechanism that would basically ensure that all activities inside and outside the polling stations and strong rooms were done in the presence of the political parties.
Representatives of the political parties would be allowed at the time of receipt of the EVMs from different polling stations so that they would know about the exact number of polled EVMs and those which were not used for polling.
The arrangements are in addition to the CCTV camera network put in place for constant monitoring of the despatch and receipt of poll-related equipment. “Political parties keeping a vigil on the developments near the strong rooms is always welcome rather than giving scope for facing questions from them later,” the official told The Hindu .
