Delhi MCD Election 2017: AAP opposes use of EVMs brought from Rajasthan

Senior AAP leaders Sanjay Singh and Dilip Pandey were part of the delegation.

New Delhi, April 10: A delegation of AAP leaders met State Election Commissioner S K Srivastava on Tuesday and registered the party's protest against the "use of EVMs of Rajasthan" to conduct the April 23 MCD elections in the city.

The delegation, led by senior AAP leader and Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, sought to know the rationale behind the SEC's decision. In a memorandum to the SEC, the Aam Aadmi Party said in order to preserve the constitutional guarantee of free and fair elections, it will not let these EVMs, which are being imported from Rajasthan, be used in the civic polls.

The party's move comes a day after media reports stated that a few machines, used during the bypoll in Rajasthan's Dholpur, may have been "tampered with". Senior AAP leaders Sanjay Singh and Dilip Pandey were part of the delegation.

The party said that in the bypolls in Dholpur constituency, 18 EVMs were found to have been tampered with in such a manner that regardless of the button pressed on the EVMs, the vote was registered for the BJP.

"To our shock and surprise, we have reliably learnt that the SEC has not merely turned a blind eye to what appears to be unequivocally a systematic attempt to rig the entire electoral process, in order to favour and benefit the BJP but has also ordered that Generation-1 EVMs be imported from Rajasthan for use in the upcoming elections to the MCD polls," AAP said in the memorandum.

It also sought to know when sufficient numbers of Generation 2 EVMs (used between 2006 and 2013) are already available in Delhi, why the EVMs were being brought from Rajasthan to conduct MCD elections in the national capital.

PTI