India
Congress Seeks Investigation; Election Commission states that party rejects the will of the people | India News – Times of India
The standoff between the Election Commission and Congress intensified on Wednesday. A day after the Congress, in a first for a national party, refused to accept the Haryana verdict, calling it “unexpected and unacceptable”, top party leaders met the EC and submitted a memorandum demanding a thorough probe even as the poll panel Congress leaders razed Jairam to the ground. Ramesh and Pawan Khera for their “unprecedented” statement that the results were “unacceptable”, saying it amounted to “an undemocratic rejection of the will of the people”.
A Congress delegation comprising former CMs Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Ashok Gehlot and party leaders KC Venugopal, Jairam Ramesh, Ajay Maken and Pawan Khera and Haryana Congress chief Udai Bhan met the EC and demanded that all machines complained about should be sealed. and secured until the investigation was completed. Senior party leader Abhishek Singhvi participated in the meeting online.
The poll panel drew a distinction between the statements of Congress spokespersons Ramesh and Khera and party president Mallikarjun Kharge’s reaction to the result. Unlike the two spokespersons, Kharge refrained from dismissing the result and limited himself to describing it as “unexpected”. The EC said it agreed to hear the congressional delegation on the EVM grievances only because it believed that the position of the party chairman, which did not reject the outcome, and not that of the two spokespersons, was the official position of the was a party.
In a strongly worded letter to Kharge, EC said the “unprecedented statement (of Ramesh and Khera)… in a generic sense, unheard of in India’s rich democratic heritage, is far from a legitimate part of freedom of speech and expression. is moving towards an undemocratic rejection of the will of the people, expressed in accordance with the legal and regulatory electoral framework, which is uniformly applied in all polls in the country, including J&K and Haryana.”
Jairam and Khera’s stand had raised many eyebrows as no national party had so far rejected the polls outright, a common occurrence in many countries.
While the Congress said EVM issues were raised in seven constituencies without any action being taken by the returning officer (RO), EC sources told TOI that six complaints were received during the counting in Haryana, of which only one related to discrepancy in battery life of EVMs. . “All these complaints were handled by RO before the results were announced. The concerned congressional candidates signed the results sheet. Yet they are now flooding the EC with complaints,” said an EC official.
According to Section 81 of the Representation of the People’s Act, 1951, once the result is declared by the RO, it can only be challenged by filing an election petition in the Supreme Court within 45 days. “All parties are well aware of these provisions but end up publicly making the EVMs or the EC the trap to build a narrative and cover up their electoral defeat. This noise is rarely followed by election demands,” said a former EC legal adviser.
Barely 92 election petitions were filed within the 45-day period after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, compared to 138 filed after the 2019 LS polls.
In its memorandum addressed to the Chief Election Commissioner, the Congress said, “During the counting of votes for Haryana, a glaring discrepancy was detected by INC candidates and their respective polling agents regarding the battery charge/health/capacity of the EVM machines.”
