PK Tiwari
Lucknow: Campaigning for the seventh and the last leg of Lok Sabha polls will come to an end on May 30 evening as the electorate will exercise their franchise on June 1.
Political pundits and politicians will now be busy discussing the possibilities. The results will be declared on June 4.
Meanwhile, political observers have once started discussing that electronic voting machines (EVMs) will be certainly blamed by the losing political parties.
It may be recalled that during the polling in the last six phases some EVMs couldn’t function smoothly and they were either replaced or repaired. However, voters had to wait for some time and this led to their disappointment.
Senior BJP leader and Union Home Minister Amit Shah while addressing public meetings in eastern UP on Monday said now the Opposition leaders would again hold EVMs responsible for their defeat.
Though the Supreme Court has rejected various pleas against EVMs and said it couldn’t reverse the system keeping in view the huge population of the nation and other related complexities, many political leaders still express doubts over EVMs.
It may be recalled that a few years ago, the Election Commission of India had invited leaders of all political parties to prove whether EVM can really be tampered with. However, no politicians or technical expert could accept the challenge of the ECI.
A retired bureaucrat, who didn’t want to be named, said that EVMs couldn’t be tampered with and those blaming these machines for their defeat were in fact adopting a face-saving device.
Another senior officer has said that the EVMs are foolproof machines and at every stage they are checked and the representatives of political parties are also involved in the process.
Meanwhile, Chief Electoral Officer of Uttar Pradesh Navdeep Rinwa has said that the first level checking of EVMs will be done with more alertness and efficiency.
