Oppn wants ballot papers; ECI says not going back

New Delhi: On the day of the Interim Budget 2019 and the last budget by the ruling NDA government, the 'United Opposition' of 20 political parties held the 'Save the Nation, Save the Democracy' meeting at the Constitution Club here, where they decided to take the efficacy of EVM machine issue to the Election Commission of India.

While addressing a press conference, Congress president Rahul Gandhi announced that the opposition leaders will go to the ECI on Monday at 5.30 pm and will submit documents, demanding to revert to the paper ballots to hold the Lok Sabha elections. This comes hours after Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora ruled out the proposal. "The main issue with the EVMs is that there is a doubt in the minds of many people in this country about the fairness of its system. So we want to create a backup system so that people can be certain about what is going on and they build their confidence in the electoral system," Gandhi mentioned.

Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora on Friday ruled out going back to the ballot paper, a demand raised by many opposition parties who have questioned authenticity of the electronic voting machine (EVM).

"We are not going back to the days of ballot paper. (The) EVMs have been in use in our country for more than two decades. And it has been a consistent policy of the ECI (Election Commission of India) for quite sometime and I think it will remain the same," Arora said.

Five Congress leaders, Rahul Gandhi, AK Antony, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mallikarjun Kharge, and Ahmed Patel, Sharad Pawar of NCP, Chandrababu Naidu of TDP, Derek O'Brien from Trinamool Congress, Ramgopal Yadav from Samajwadi Party, Mohd Salim and TK Rangarajan from CPI(M), Sharad Yadav from LJD, Sanjay Singh of Aam Admi Party, Omar Abdullah from NC, Satish Chandra Misra of BSP, Manoj Jha from RJD, Kanimozhi from DMK, Jayant Chaudhary of RLD, D Raja of CPI, Shri Danish Ali of JD(S) ,Badruddin Ajmal of AIUDF, NK Premchandran of RSP, Ashok Kumar Singh of JVM, Jitin Ram Manjhi from HAM, Kodandaram from TJS and Khurram Omar of IUML were present in the meeting.

The Congress chief further made a scathing attack on the NDA government and asserted, "Rs. 17 in a day is "an insult" to farmers. You can waive off Rs 3.5 lakh crore loan of 15 people but give only Rs 17 per day to farmers. If it is not an insult then what else is this?"

Earlier on the day, Gandhi also tweeted, "Dear NoMo, 5 years of your incompetence and arrogance has destroyed the lives of our farmers. Giving them Rs. 17 a day is an insult to everything they stand and work for," with the hashtag #AakhriJumlaBudget. The farmer scheme, called PM-Kisan or ''Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi'', was widely anticipated as the government struggles to calm farmers' anger ahead of the impending general election. The government announced that small and marginal farmers, who own less than two acres of land, will receive direct annual handouts of around Rs. 6,000 rupees, at a cost of Rs. 75,000 crore to the government.

Further, countering to the remarks from some NDA leaders that the interim budget 2019 was a surgical strike on the Opposition, the Congress president asked the ruling party to wait till the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

"Surgical strike is going to happen with the Narendra Modi government in a couple of months. We have a lot of issues to take to the public," he stated.

The decision to rake up the EVM tampering issue with the ECI was decided during the 'United India At Brigade' rally in Kolkata on January 19, 2019. A high-level committee has also been set up.