Trinamool lodges plaints against malfunctioning of EVMs and VVPATs

Siliguri: In the second phase of Lok Sabha elections, All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) leaders registered a written complaint with the Chief Electoral Officer of Election Commission of India (ECI) demanding immediate intervention on non-functioning and malfunctioning EVMs and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) in Darjeeling, Raiganj and Balurghat Lok Sabha (LS) constituencies.

“The failure of EVMs during the initial hours of polling in Raiganj PC has raised serious doubts in the mind of electors about the integrity and reliability of the electoral process in the said region. In a democracy, it is imperative that the electoral process remains transparent, efficient and accessible to all eligible voters.

Therefore, we requested the ECI to conduct a thorough investigation into the causes of the malfunctioning EVMs and VVPAT in Raiganj, Balurghat and Darjeeling PCs and take necessary actions,” said a TMC leader. Women, elderly people and individuals stood for long hours since the morning amid the scorching heat but were unable to cast their votes due to these technical issues and went back home without voting, feeling harassed.

According to AITC, they received numerous complaints regarding the non-functioning and malfunctioning EVMs and VVPATs in Raiganj, Balurghat and Darjeeling since the inception of the polling period, which started around 7 am on Friday, causing significant disruption in the electoral process and severe inconvenience to voters.As per reports, the maximum number of complaints have been raised from the booth poll numbers — 1, 04, 22, 23, 41, 47, 56, 60, 75, 70, 84, 99, 124, 162, 184, 140, 165, 129, 115, 53, 97, 103, 98, 253, 108, 218, 91, 131, 126, 102, 214, 167, 117, 156 and 140 of Raiganj Parliamentary constituency (PC), which are located in the Assembly Constituencies (AC) of Raiganj, Goalpokhar, Karandighi, Kaliyaganj, Hemtabad and Islampur.

All these booth polls are severely affected by the non-functioning of EVMs and issues emerging in the VVPAT machines.

More than 50 complaints were received from the Raiganj PC between 7 am and 9 am. After making several complaints on behalf of AITC, a few technical issues were resolved, though after a considerable period of time. However, the AITC still received several grievances and complaints from polling agents regarding malfunctioning of EVMs and VVPAT machines stationed across polling booths in Darjeeling and Balurghat.