The Trinamool Congress leaders have found new grounds to their claim of replacing electronic voting machines (EVMs) with paper ballots.
An incident of EVM malfunctioning in Koregaon of Satara district of Maharashtra during the assembly elections on Monday, in which voters raised alarm that all votes being cast were going to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has given the Trinamool Congress in Bengal a fresh scope for arguing its case.
The ruling party in Bengal has been claiming for a long time that the EVMs can be tampered with. In the assembly elections of Maharashtra held on Monday, voters from the polling booth of Koregaon raised alarm when it was suspected that all votes cast were going to the BJP. The same thing was reflected in the VVPATs (voter verifiable paper audit trails) where the votes cast are recorded in print. The EVM was then replaced by the election officials.
West Bengal chief minister and Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee has been raising her voice against the EVMs for a long time now. Banerjee had spoken about manipulated EVMs even in the last Lok Sabha elections, addressing the issue in a rally held in Kolkata on the Trinamool’s Martyr’s Day programme on July 21.
The CM has cited examples of developed countries where EVMs have been replaced by paper ballots.
Trinamool Congress will revamp their campaign against EVMs in the wake of the Koragaon incident, said senior leader Partha Chatterjee.
