Opposition to seek clarification from election panel on remote EVMs

New Delhi, March 23

Leaders of Opposition parties today held a meeting at the residence of NCP chief Sharad Pawar here and decided to seek answers to their posers with regard to the efficacy of remote electronic voting machine in elections from the ECI.

leaders resolve to uphold federalism

After meeting Akhilesh Yadav and discussing the possibility of cobbling up a front against the BJP minus the Congress, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee on Thursday followed it up by meeting her Odisha counterpart Naveen Patnaik. Later, the two leaders told the media that they talked about the importance of safeguarding the federal structure of India. tns

The meeting, which was convened this evening by Pawar, was attended among others by Congress MP Digvijaya Singh, Rajya Sabha MP Kapil Sibal and Samajwadi Party MP Ram Gopal Yadav, NCP leader Praful Patel, CPI leader D Raja, BRS leader Keshava Rao, CPM leader Elamaram Kareem and AAP Rajya Sabha member Sushil Gupta.

No one from the TMC was present at the meeting despite an invitation having been sent to the party by the NCP chief.

Briefing the media after the meeting, Digvijaya Singh said that there is suspicion in the country over the remote EVM.

He said the ECI accepted that the EVM is “not a standalone machine” as the names and symbols of the candidates contesting the elections are installed via the internet. “Earlier, they used to say that it is a one-time programmable chip. Now, they accept that it is a multi-programmable chip,” he noted.

BJP’s media cell head Anil Baluni said, “As soon as the elections come near, they start crying over the voting machine as these parties have already begun looking for an excuse for their imminent defeat in the upcoming poll.”