Dismissing Congress charge, EC says Haryana checks show zero EVM manipulation

New Delhi: The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Tuesday rejected the Congress allegations of battery-linked manipulation of the EVMs in Haryana elections, citing re-verification reports from Returning Officers of 26 assembly constituencies.

The ECI said after due checks it was found that each step in the electoral process was flawless and done under the watch of Congress candidates or agents, as was verified in the 1,600 page reports from the ROs concerned.

"The Returning Officers have not found any evidence of any wrongdoing in any electoral processes. The replies reflect continuous participation of INC candidates, representatives and their agents in various processes of election, including EVM processes," the poll panel has said in its reply to the Congress.


On the counting day (October 8), the Congress sent a memorandum to ECI, alleging that between 9-11 am, there was an "unexplained slowdown" in updating of Haryana results on the ECI's website and this allowed for "bad faith actors to spin narratives that undermine the process".

Later in a press conference, Congress' Jairam Ramesh and Pawan Khera also expressed doubts over linkage of varying EVM battery percentage levels with voting results.

The poll body has also pointed several instances of the Congress party raising similar suspicions around the electoral process in the last one year and stated that such "frivolous and unfounded doubts" have the potential of creating turbulence when crucial steps like polling and counting are in live play, a time when both public and political parties' anxiousness is peaking.

It has observed that such "baseless" allegations were often widely publicised by INC even before receipt of any formal letter in the ECI and mostly coinciding with the peak of the electoral cycle i.e., near to or on poll day or counting day.

The ECI has added that the persistence of this approach is disconcerting when it emanates from a reputed national political party of historic standing as the INC and pointed to the recent trend of how the INC has again raised the smoke of a "generic" doubt about the credibility of an entire electoral outcome exactly in a similar manner as it has done in recent past.