EC reviews preparedness for Delhi Assembly polls
Elections to 70 Assembly seats in Delhi are scheduled to be held early next year.
Representatives of 21 opposition parties led by TDP chief and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu will on Tuesday meet the Election Commission raising concerns over the electronic voting machines (EVMs) and VVPAT slips two days ahead of counting of votes.
According to a senior Telugu Desam Party leader, a delegation of 21 opposition parties will approach the poll panel to complain about the EVMs and the VVPAT slips.
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The opposition parties have been complaining about EVM malfunctioning and demanding the use of ballot papers from even before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
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The TDP leader said that besides their party, the delegation would also include the Congress, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Trinamool Congress, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Communist Party of India (CPI), CPI-M and many other parties.
The opposition parties had also filed a review petition in the Supreme Court seeking a direction to the Election Commission to increase VVPAT verification from five to at least 50 per cent of EVMs during the counting of votes in the General Elections.
The petition was rejected by the court.
However, the court had directed the Election Commission to increase VVPAT verification from one EVM per constituency to five randomly selected EVMs in the elections.
Chandrababu Naidu had earlier said that the confidence of the voter can only be restored through paper trail machines.
In his meeting with Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora last month, Naidu complained that the poll body “miserably failed to live up to the spirit of the constitutional duty” in the state.
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