Faulty EVMs: Court sends notice to EC, seeks reply within 2 weeks

The Indore bench of the MP High Court has issued notices to the EC, seeking reply on the alleged irregularities during the recently-held municipal elections in Alot tehsil of Ratlam district.

The Indore bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court on Friday issued notices to the Election Commission, the state Election Commission officials and the Ratlam district administration seeking reply on the alleged irregularities that cropped up during the recently-held municipal and nagar parishad elections in Alot tehsil of Ratlam district.

Hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) that pointed out the malfunctioning of some electronic voting machines (EVMs), the division bench comprising Justice PK Jaiswal and Justice DK Jain admitted the petition and sought reply from the officials within two weeks.

The petition was filed by BJP MLA of Alot constituency Jitendra Gehlot. In his petition, he pointed out that the EVMs deployed for voting in Alot tehsil were faulty and displayed varying vote counts.

Every voter had to cast two votes, one for electing their ward corporator and other for electing the president of the nagar parishad. The counsel for the petitioner, advocate Abhishek Tugnawat, raised questions about the fairness of the democratic election process.

He said, "The EVMs showed varied vote count. In one ward, a candidate got more votes than the number of votes actually polled. At the other, the combined vote count of all the contestants remained less than the total number of votes polled."

The advocate pointed out that at one place the votes polled were 755, whereas the contestant received 758 votes — three more than total votes polled.