Kairana bye-election: EC orders repolling at 73 booths on Wednesday

Re-polling will take place in 73 polling stations in Uttar Pradesh's Kairana and 49 polling stations in Bhandara Gondia in Maharashtra on Wednesday, the Election Commission has said after the failure of paper trail machines in yesterday's by-elections.

Over 11 per cent of the 10,300 VVPAT, or Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail, machines across 10 states had developed faults and had to be replaced yesterday.

Earlier in the day, the Chief Election Commissioner OP Rawat said there were absolutely no problems in EVMs used in by-elections but problems were noticed in the VVPATs which was used for the first time in these constituencies and by the polling parties.

A large number of complaints were received about malfunctioning of both Electronic Voting Machines as well as VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Trail) from Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh Lok Sabha constituencies of Palghar and Bhandara-Gondia and Kairana, respectively.

In many booths polling had to be suspended and local EC officials blamed the malfunction on the 'heat factor' and ended up inviting ridicule.