New Delhi: Three Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in West Delhi parliamentary constituency were substituted for their corresponding Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPATs) as a result of discrepancies that arrived while conducting deletion of mock votes after the constituency went to polls on May 12.
Three EVMs at Hari Nagar, Dwarka, and Najafgarh assembly constituencies incurred errors as the presiding officer in the respective polling stations forgot to cancel the mock poll data, which is cast by polling agents of participating political parties before voting begins.
The VVPATs from these three polling stations will be counted in addition to the mandatory five random ones, which are selected from each assembly constituency.
As a result, the total number of VVPATs counted in West Delhi was 53 instead of 50.
According to an Election Commission letter accessed by Millennium Post, the mistake was detected and duly reported to the election regulator on May 14, two days after the polls were conducted.
This comes as a similar mistake was reported at a polling station in Chandni Chowk and the election regulator had consequently ordered for a repoll at that particular polling booth.
However, the three polling stations in West Delhi did not go for polling a second time because the corresponding VVPAT machines were sealed according to the procedure and held the integrity of the electoral
mandate.
Explaining the move, Chief Electoral Officer of Delhi, Ranbir Singh said that the vote count as per these VVPATs was unaffected by the errors in the EVMs at these polling stations.
And this is why the paper ballot will be counted from these polling stations instead of ordering a repoll there.
"We consider each case accordingly and the polling station that went to repoll in Chandni Chowk had some other manipulation in the voter registry at the time of voting as well. This is why it was deemed fit to order a repoll there," he told the Millennium Post.