A report published by the Association of Democratic Reforms has revealed that major discrepancies exist between the number of votes in the EVM and the number of votes at the time of counting. The Report mentions that the total number of differences is about 5 crore across 542 Lok Sabha seats in India. In Gujarat, the difference in data is 15521 votes on 24 seats.
A report by the Vote for Democracy (VFD) group has claimed that for all the seven phases considered together, the cumulative hike in votes from initial turnout figures is close to 5 crore votes, or 4,65,46,885 to be precise. The hike in voter turnout has disproportionately benefited the ruling regime, the report claimed.
The integrity of the Election Commission is at stake as in 24 constituencies, it is found that the votes registered and votes counted show discrepancies. In some constituencies, the votes polled are more than the votes counted and in some, the votes counted are more than the votes polled, showing discrepancies ranging between -3194 to +123, totalling 15521.
The votes polled are less than the votes counted by 3194 in Bardoli, by 2096 in Bhavnagar, by 1577 in Patan, and 1337 in Anand. However, in none of these constituencies, the discrepancy is significant enough to impact the verdict.
The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), an organization working for democratic and electoral rights had claimed these irregularities have been found in a total of 538 seats.5,54,598 fewer votes were counted in comparison to the votes cast in 362 seats, while 35,093 more votes were counted than the votes cast in 176 seats.
Earlier in May, after two phases of elections, Congress had criticised the Election Commission for the delay in sharing the data of overall voter turnout as “completely unacceptable”. There had been inordinate delay in publishing the data causing people to cast doubt on the integrity of the Election Commission. The data was made available more than 10 days after Phase 1 and four days after Phase 2 of polling. However, the poll body did not release the total number of voters in each constituency.
There has been no response from the Election Commission so far on these claims of ADR.
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