HYDERABAD: Raising suspicion about manipulation of EVMs in the Telangana assembly polls, the state unit of the Congress Tuesday demanded counting of all VVPATs.
As the Congress headed for a comprehensive defeat at the hands of ruling TRS, Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee president N Uttam Kumar Reddy also claimed that the Election Commission declined to accept the party's demand for counting of VVPATs.
He said his party has petitioned the state Chief Electoral Officer here and the Election Commission in Delhi for counting the VVPATs. The VVPAT or paper trail machine is a device which dispenses a slip with the symbol of the party for which a person has voted for.
The slip appears on a small window for seven seconds and then drops in a box and provides a mean to the voter to verify his vote "For these doubts to be cleared to some extent, we demanded VVPAT, paper trails, to be counted 100 per cent in all constituencies," he told reporters here.
The voting patterns and the count of votes polled in the EVMs were completely different, Reddy claimed and accused the EC of resisting the demand for VVPAT counting.
"The whole Telangana society has doubts on EVMs. Why the EC is not counting every paper trail linked to Electronic Voting Machines delaying result by four-five hours. The Commission does not have a proper answer,"the TPCC chief said.
He said it would be a "black day" for democracy in Telangana if paper trails were not counted and said what was the purpose of the VVPATs.
"We have to say Election Commission is murdering democracy along with KCR (TRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao)," he said.
"Election has to be transparent. Why is it that the Election Commission is not agreeing to counting of the VVPAT paper trails. What is the purpose of having VVPAT paper trails if they are not to be counted," the Congress leader said.
The party would undertake a detailed analysis of the poll outcome, he said.
Earlier in the day, Reddy in a communication by the Congress said all party candidates should submit letters to their returning officers demanding counting of VVPAT paper trails.
Congress which led an alliance with TDP, CPI and Telangana Jana Samiti (TJS) has so far won 15 seats out of the 99 seats it contested.
The party was leading in four others. Of the alliance partners, the TDP won two seats while the others drew a blank.