Jabalpur: After facing defeat in the recent Lok Sabha polls in Madhya Pradesh, as many as 14 Congress leaders and some independents moved High Court on Monday casting doubt on EVMs and VVPATs.
The leaders who moved court include veteran leader and former MLA from Jhabua and Ratlam constituencies, Kantilal Bhuria.
“No one, including the public, is able to digest the fact that our candidates lost by huge margins ranging from one lakh to five lakh,” veteran Congress leader Bhuria said.
The prominent tribal leader said winning and losing was part of the election, but alleged that one-sided win had raised doubts. He also accused the Centre of interfering with the working of Election Commission.
In a humiliating defeat, the Congress lost 28 out of 29 Lok Sabha seats in Madhya Pradesh.
Bhuria claimed there were problems in EVMs and VVPATs. “We raised all these matters before the Election Commission but were compelled to approach the high court as we did not get any satisfactory response,” the senior Congress leader said.
Rajaram Tripathi from Satna, Ashok Singh from Gwalior, Kiran Ahirwar from Tikamgarh, Madhu Bhagat from Balaghat, Shailendra Diwan from Hoshangabad, Kamal Marawi from Mandla, Babulal Malviya from Ujjain, Govind Mujalde from Khargone, Shailendra Patel from Vidisha, Pratap Singh from Damoh, Prabhu Singh from Sagar and Pankaj Sanghvi from Indore.
Independents Rakesh Dixit from Bhopal, Rajkumar Chauhan from Sidhi and Vishnukant Sharma from Gwalior have moved their similar petitions. BSP candidate Kankar Munjare from Balaghat too has filed a petition.
Leaders like Devashish Jarariya who contested from Bhind, Pramila Singh from Shahdol, Prabhu Singh from Sagar and Shailendra Diwan from Hoshangabad had approached the court on Saturday.
The petitioners have objected to the fact that EVMs brought to the counting centres were charged upto 90% despite hectic usage in voting process.
Several candidates have referred to poll code violations and EC failing to resolve public’s confusion on various issues and others in their pleas.
“I mentioned issues such as EVM having batteries upto 90% on counting day, EC removing EVM data from its portal quickly and EC failing to address various confusions prevailing among public over election process,” Jarariya told News18.
Similar concerns were voiced by Diwan. “Our polling agents had objected to 90% batteries in EVMs at two places in Hoshangabad, but they were made to believe that everything was fine,” Diwan said, claiming that loss margin seemed impossible as large numbers of voters vouched that they voted in party’s favour.
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