BHUBANESWAR : The BJD on Monday alleged huge discrepancies in the voting and counting process in the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections earlier this year, and urged the Election Commission of India (ECI) to clarify on the issue.
A delegation led by former Rajya Sabha MP Amar Patnaik and Rajya Sabha members Sasmit Patra and Sulata Deo submitted a memorandum to the ECI in this regard at New Delhi on Monday.
Addressing a media conference, the BJD leaders said the party has pointed out three major discrepancies. The first was the differences in votes polled in a booth as shown in 17(C) form and the total number of votes in the EVM for the same booth as mentioned in form 20 filled up by the returning officer after counting.
A variance of 682 votes was found in booth number 57 of Phulbani Assembly constituency under the Kandhamal parliamentary seat. The difference was 660 and 784 in booth numbers 165 and 219 respectively of Talsara Assembly constituency under the Sundargarh LS seat. Similar disparity of 42 votes has been found in Ekamra Assembly segment under the Bhubaneswar LS constituency.
The BJD leaders said such discrepancies found in many other booths not mentioned in the memorandum were high enough to impact the election results.
“Such type of variation has also raised questions on the integrity of the entire polling and counting process,” they said.
The second point raised by the party was the huge difference between the total votes polled in a Lok Sabha seat and the seven Assembly segments under it. The memorandum mentioned that there was a huge discrepancy in votes counted in all the 21 parliamentary constituencies. It was 4,056, 3,521 and 2,701 votes in the Dhenkanal, Kandhamal and Balangir LS constituencies respectively.
In Jajpur LS seat where the result was decided by only 2,000 votes, the difference between the parliamentary constituency and Assembly segments was 677 votes which is serious, they said.
The third point was the more than 30 per cent difference in polling as shown by the ECI at 11.45 pm on the voting date and after two days, which was highest in the country. The BJD stated such discrepancies were within two per cent in 2004, 2009, 2014 and 2019 elections. There was a huge shift of 30.64 per cent in Keonjhar Assembly constituency from where Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi won the election, they said.
“We urge the ECI take up these issues seriously and clarify within a specified time frame to clear doubts in the minds of the people,” the delegation members said.