Congress MP Sanjay Nirupam, who was defeated in the Mumbai North constituency, alleged on Saturday that the Electronic Voting Machines had been tampered with and said he would approach the Election Commission. BJP candidate Gopal Shetty won the seat with a whopping 6,64,004 votes, while Mr. Nirupam stood second with 2,17,422 votes.
Mr. Nirupam said even before the polls he had approached the Returning Officer to warn him about such a possibility. “I told him that if I lose, it would only be an EVM which could defeat me,” Mr. Nirupam said at a press conference.
While he accepted defeat and was aware that anti-incumbency played a huge role, he said the margins were too huge to believe that it was a fair process. “I have worked in my constituency at the grass-roots level in the last five years. Malvani, Ganpat Patil Nagar, Hanuman Nagar have been Congress strongholds since 1986. When I saw that even in those areas I had very big margins, I realised there was a problem,” he said. He added that a survey conducted by AC Nielson had said there would be no impact of anti-incumbency in the north-west constituency.
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Mr. Nirupam said the confidence with which the BJP had been stating the number of seats it would get and that the Congress would be wiped out was not coincidental. “Nobody can predict so accurately, however experienced one is. You can be sure of the results in advance only when you have a hand in it,” he said.
“If need be, I’ll approach the court,” he added.