Mamata alleges high-tech rigging by Left

Kolkata, May 19 (UNI)Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee today alleged that the CPI(M)-led Left Front resorted to high-tech rigging to win the Assembly election in West Bengal.

She demanded a judicial inquiry into the whole electoral process in the state and said the party would soon send letters to the Election Commission and the Central government, intimating them about its contention.

''The CPI(M) has won only through high-tech rigging by tampering with the Electronic Voting Machines. Earlier, it was manual rigging,'' she told reporters at a hurriedly-convened press conference at her residence.

The Trinamool Congress supremo said the party had intimated the Election Commission about the possibilites of such a malpractice way back in 2004.

''We came to know from a US blogger that such practice is very much possible. We informed the EC in August, 2004, but nothing has been done. It has been proved that machines can be tampered. Most of the people told us they had voted for us but then where did the votes go?,'' she wondered.

''We had apprehended such an outcome of the elections. Now it has been proved true,'' she stated.

Earlier before the elections, she had told newspersons that the EC was working in their favour and the Opposition, specially her party, would win the elections this time. But later during a press meet she said she would comment on what was going on only after the elections were over.

''Whatever we demanded the EC had conceded and this is for the first time that it tried to make the elections free and fair in its true sense,'' she stated.

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