No ‘tampering’ of EVMs: EC to Kejriwal
New Delhi: AAP chief Arvind Kerjiwal is correctly enrolled in the voters’ list for the upcoming assembly polls in the national capital, the Election Commission on Wednesday told the Delhi High Court.
The poll body made the submission before the ben-ch of Justice Vibhu Bakhru, which had on Monday sought its response on Con-gress leader Kiran Walia’s plea seeking removal of Kerjiwal’s name from the Delhi electoral rolls on the ground that he has illegally declared himself to be a resident of the national capital. “Arvind Kejriwal’s name was correctly enrolled in the electoral rolls of Delhi.
He is registered as a voter in New Delhi constituency from the address 87, Block K, BK Dutt Colony (Jor Bagh),” ECI told the bench. The court, however, asked the poll panel to produce the documents related to the decision taken by it while rejecting the representation made by Walia to delete entry of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader’s name from the electoral roll.
The poll panel also told the court that it has checked the latest electoral roll for Delhi and found Kejriwal’s name in the voters’ list from B K Dutt Colony. “Though he had briefly lived at Tilak Marg after taking over the post of Chief Minister last year, he had applied for a change of address just ahead of the polls, first to V P House on Rafi Marg and then to B K Dutt Colony,” the panel said, adding that “now they cannot make changes as it was to be done only before filing of the nomination”.
The court, earlier, had issued notice to EC on Walia’s plea, who is contesting the assembly election scheduled for February 7 from the New Delhi constituency, alleging that Kejriwal is not a resident of Delhi and had got his name entered in the electoral rolls by “manipu-lation, cheating and fraud”.
The plea had claimed that “form 8A” filed by Kejriwal to change his name and address in the electoral rolls was “not maintainable” because he was no longer on the electoral rolls. Walia had claimed that Kejriwal “ceased to be an elector from Delhi” when the EC rejected his application for enrolment as a resident of Vitthal Bhai Patel House on January 9, 2015.
“Question of trans-position does not arise” the plea had said, adding that Kejriwal should have filed fresh application as a voter in Delhi under form 6.
As per the law, an assembly poll candidate must be an elector from any constituency in the state going to poll. A similar plea has also been filed by one Neeraj Saxena seeking cancellation of Kejriwal’s candidature in the upcoming poll on the ground that he has allegedly illegally declared himself to be a resident of Delhi.
The Election Commis-sion on Wednesday dismissed apprehensions expressed by Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal that certain electronic voting machines(EVMs) have been “tampered” with to favour BJP in the February 7 Delhi Assembly polls.
Kejriwal, who met top EC officials on Wednesday, was explained the “factual position” in detail that there was no tampering with the machines’ software which could result in tampering.
He was explained that locks of three ‘control units’ and four ‘ballot units’ were broken apparently during transportation and the units were replaced in the presence of general observers.
An AAP representative had later signed a document which detailed the facts, EC sources said. He was told that the faults were basically “mechanical” in nature, they said. The sources said the machines which Kejriwal referred to belong to the post-2006 batch which have “very little” scope of tampering.
“The Election Commission has cleared all our doubts about the EVM machine issue. They said that EVMs used are latest and tamper-proof. They are all double checked,” Kejriwal told reporters after meeting EC officials. The AAP Convener was told that the EVMs and control units pass through several stages of checks before being finally used for actual voting. (PTI)