There’s is no mismatch between VVPAT slips (Voter verifiable paper audit trail) and voting machine (EVM) numbers, said Chief Election Officer Maharashtra, rejecting the Opposition allegations about a vote mismatch in the just concluded Maharashtra state polls.
According to rules laid down by the Supreme Court and the Election Commission, it is mandatory to count VVPAT slips of randomly selected five polling stations per Assembly constituencies and to match it against the numbers in EVMs.
A VVPAT slip count of randomly selected 5 polling stations per assembly constituency was conducted on November 23, the vote counting day in Maharashtra, in front of the Counting Observer and representatives of candidates, said the Chief Election Officer Maharashtra.
“As per that, slip count of 1440 VVPAT units from 288 Assembly constituencies of Maharashtra state has been tallied with respective Control Unit Data. There is no discrepancy found between VVPAT slip count and EVM Control unit count as per the reports received from the concerned District Election Officials (DEO). Due procedure laid by ECI has been followed,” said the officer.
Over the weekend, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar, at an NDTV event, noted that the “ninda ras” or the trend of criticism is on the rise and the the ability to praise or see the positives is on a decline. The comments were in the backdrop of the Opposition’s questions over the voting machines.
