Malfunctioning of Electronic Voting Machines ( EVM) at a large scale marred the polling for Kairana Lok Sabha and Noorpur assembly bypolls on Monday.
The RLD and Samajwadi Party have charged BJP with deliberately tampering with the EVMs to win the byelections. On the contrary, BJP leaders also complained of malfunctioning of the EVMs to the election commission. RLD candidate Tabassum also registered a complaint in this regard.
As per the claims of the alliance candidates, about 175 EVMs in Kairana and 130 EVMs in Noorpur developed snags, thus affecting the polling.
Lashing out at the ruling BJP, RLD’s state spokesperson Sunil Rohta said, “This is a deliberate attempt of the BJP to restrict the polling in Muslim, Dalit and Jat-dominated areas where people have extended their support to RLD candidate Tabassum Hasan.”
BJP MLA Kapil Deo Agarwal, however, trashed the opposition charges. “These charges are baseless and made out of frustration because BJP candidate Mriganka will win the election with a good margin,” he said.
Soon after the polling started at 7 am, reports of malfunctioning of EVMs started pouring in from different polling booths. Perturbed by this largescale malfunctioning, the RLD-SP leaders sought the report from their agents and approached the authorities concerned for action.
Voters stood for hours in sultry conditions at many booths waiting for the polling to restart. The difficulty was faced by senior citizens and Muslims as many of them were fasting in view of the Ramzan. Many voters had to return without casting their vote.
RLD candidate Tabassum Hasan said EVMs developed snags mainly in areas dominated by Muslims and Dalits, charging the BJP with doing it deliberately. “They were not expecting such a turnout of Muslim voters during Ramzan,” said Hasan, who also accused the administration of delaying replacement of EVMs.
Tabassum has reported the matter to Chief Election Commission with a constituency-wise list of booths where EVMs developed snags.
However, BJP too complained of malfunctioning of EVMs in about 100 polling booths. BJP leader Devendra Singh, who is in-charge of Kairana election, said that he is surprised over such a big number of EVMs developing snags.
The situation was no different in Noorpur Assembly segment where SP alleged that more than 130 EVMs malfunctioned during the polling. SP MLA Manoj Paras said the BJP has engineered this, realising that people are voting in favour of SP candidate Naemul Hasan.
Addl District Magistrate of Shamli, Kunwar Bahadur Singh, explained that problems occurred in VVPATS attached to EVMs as they were heat sensitive and in many booths, polling staff had placed machines near windows exposing them to sun. He said that malfunctioned machines were replaced and polling resumed thereafter.
The polling, however, was peaceful in Kairana and Noorpur except an incident in Bhura village of Shamli where police had to resort to lathicharge to disperse villagers who allegedly pelted stones at a polling booth. The ruckus started when a woman was stopped from casting vote as officials sought her ID.
The polling for the two seats, however, is expected to be low. Till 4pm, there was about 45%polling in Kairana and 48% in Noorpur.