Maha Polls: ECI Confirms No Discrepancies in VVPAT Voter-Slips Count

All doubts stood at rest as the Election Commission of India (ECI) Tuesday said no discrepancies were found in the counting of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) voting slips in the recently-concluded Maharashtra Assembly elections.

As per the ECI norms, the mandatory counting of 1,140 VVPAT slips in all 288 Assembly constituencies during the counting of votes in the Maharashtra elections was completed on November 23.

The ECI rules required counting of VVPAT slips at five polling stations, drawn by lot from the polling station numbers in each of the 288 Assembly segments that had voted on November 20.
At that time, representatives of the candidates were present and the purpose was to verify the number of VVPAT slips with the number of votes of each candidate in the EVMs.

Accordingly, the polling stations were selected on the counting day by mixing the number of five centres each in all the constituencies in the presence of ECI observers and the counting representatives of the candidates.

According to this process, after counting of votes in five polling stations in each Assembly constituency, no discrepancy was found anywhere between the candidate-wise number of votes in the EVMs and the candidate-wise number of slips in the VVPAT machines. Reports have been received from all 36 District Election Officers in the state of Maharashtra," said the ECI in a statement today.

Since this exercise was done in the presence of representatives of candidates present at each counting center, those documents confirming the process was duly completed were also signed by these representatives after the completion of the process.

For this entire process of counting of VVPAT slips, the ECI said that a separate room was set up at every counting centre with special security, and the entire process was covered and filmed by CCTVs and preserved, and all the rules were strictly followed for all the 288 Assembly constituencies in the state.

As per the prescribed procedure of the ECI regarding counting of votes, counting of VVPAT slips for five polling stations of each constituency is mandatory, and without its completion, the counting process is not finished, nor can the winning candidate be declared.

Even as the ECI made its statement, it was a response to the statement by the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) allies Congress-Shiv Sena (UBT)-Nationalist Congress Party (SP), Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, Communist Party of India (Marxist), besides some smaller parties and certain losing candidates from the ruling MahaYuti side who raised questions over the poll outcome.

Beginning with Markadwadi village in Solapur, MVA has demanded a return to the paper ballot voting system alleging manipulations, etc, but the ECI has rejected all such contentions.