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As tussle over the next Chief Minister of Maharashtra within the Mahayuti alliance continues, parties part of Maha Vikas Aghadi still fume over the loss and raising questions over the credibility of the EVMs.
NCP-SCP leader Rohit Pawar raised questions over EVMs mentioning the rise in voting percentage in compression to the parliamentary elections which were held months ago. "There has been a huge rise in voting (percentage). In comparison to parliamentary elections, 76 lakhs more voters have voted in assembly elections... We need to investigate that. There are a lot of complaints against EVMs," said NCP-SCP leader Rohit Pawar on Wednesday. "We demand that the election commission should come forward and should ask all the parties to come and meet at a place where there will be cameras and media to make it transparent... People have started to believe that EVM is not the right way to conduct elections...," he added further. Meanwhile, Congress MP Ranjeet Ranjan blamed the EVM for the election results and demanded that elections be conducted using ballot papers. "A campaign should definitely be run, there is something fishy in the results that are coming, we will not blame anyone but we all want it should come on the ballot paper because even if you take international examples, most countries still conduct elections through ballot papers..," she said. Earlier, on Tuesday, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge demanded the replacement of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) with ballot papers, alleging that votes from "SC, ST, OBC and poor communities are being wasted." "Votes of people from SC, ST, OBC, and poor communities are being wasted. Set aside EVMs. We do not want EVMs; we want voting on ballot paper...Let them keep the machine at their home, at the home of PM Modi or Amit Shah...Then we would know where you (BJP-NDA) stand," Mallikarjun Kharge said while speaking at the Constitution Day program in Delhi. The Congress Chief's scathing remarks come on the heels of his party's crushing defeat in the Maharashtra Assembly election, where the Mahayuti alliance swept to power in a landslide victory with the BJP emerging as the biggest winner with 132 seats out of 280 member Maharashtra assembly, while its allies--the Shiv Sena led by Eknath Shinde and the NCP led by Ajit Pawar--won 57 and 41 seats, respectively. Supreme Court also dismissed a public interest litigation (PIL) petition on seeking the reintroduction of the physical paper ballot voting system in elections in India. A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and PB Varale dismissed the plea filed by evangelist KA Paul seeking physical ballot voting in India. During the hearing, the petitioner said that even leaders like Chandrababu Naidu and YS Jagan Mohan Reddy had questioned Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) tampering. To this the bench said what happens is, if you win the elections, EVMs are not tampered. (ANI)
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