BHUBANESWAR: Unable to reconcile with the humiliating defeat in the general elections, the BJP today accused the ruling BJD of tampering with the EVMs.
The core committee of the BJP that analysed the poll results at a meeting here, issued a statement blaming the EVMs for the unexpected results.
It is now becoming clear from circumstantial evidence that electronic voting machines were manipulated to favour the BJD. Banking on pre-poll and post-poll survey reports, the meeting observed that none had predicted such a landslide victory for the ruling BJD. The results have taken many of the winning candidates by surprise and they had never imagined winning with such a huge margin, the meeting observed.
Instead of going to the core issues of the defeat like organisational preparedness and selection of candidates, the party discussed the use of EVMs as compared to ballot paper in election so far as tampering is concerned. The core committee strongly favoured a national debate on the issue as developed nations like the United States of America and Canada have shifted from EVMs to ballot paper as voting through EVM was not foolproof.
The core committee further alleged that use of money and muscle power and misuse of administrative machinery by the BJD were the other reasons for the defeat of BJP candidates.
The BJD hijacked the BJP’s success in the coalition government despite the fact that the performance of BJP ministers was much better than the alliance partner. While the BJD fully cashed in on the Government successes, the BJP got nothing, the press note said.
Earlier, Pujari had admitted that the break up of alliance of his party with the BJD cost the BJP dear in the election.
After the core committee meeting in the forenoon, there was a State-level functionaries meeting in the afternoon where the election results were discussed in detail.
The meeting presided over by Pujari was attended by BB Harichandan, Manmohan Samal, Bijay Mohapatra, Dilip Ray, Braja Kishore Tripathy, Dharmendra Pradhan, Jual Oram and Panchanan Rout.