‘Usual good smile, but…’: Congress complains about what happened inside EC office over Haryana EVM | India News – Times of India

NEW DELHI: After meeting officials of the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Wednesday, the Congress party delegation said they complaints by EVMs from seven Haryana constituencies to the poll body.
Bhupinder Hoodawho led Congress’s Haryana poll campaign, said the Election Commission has assured them that it would look into all complaints.
Hooda also said the Haryana survey results were “surprising” as they contradicted the survey reports and experts, and the trends reversed in the BJP’s favor only when EVMs came into play.
“These results from Haryana are surprising as everyone thought that Congress would form the government in Haryana. Be it IB, experts, research reports, but what happened was that when the counting of postal ballots started, Congress was in charge everywhere, but when the counting of ballots from the EVMs started, Congress lagged behind. We have received many complaints. The counting of votes has been delayed in several places. The Election Commission has assured us that they are looking into all complaints,” Hooda told news agency ANI ECI after the meeting.
Congress leader Pawan Khera said the response from Electoral Commission officials was “a good smile and a good cup of tea as usual, but we need more”.
“We met the Election Commission officials and presented the documents of seven Assembly constituencies. Their response was a good smile and a good cup of tea as usual, but we need more. Complaints from 13 more Assembly constituencies will be referred to ECI. There were problems with the batteries of the machines by our candidates. We have asked ECI for a response after conducting the investigation,” Khera said.
Khera further said, “We told ECI about the 20 complaints, seven of which were written complaints from seven constituencies. There were machines that were at 99% and other normal machines at 60-70% on the day of the count. We demanded that those machines should be sealed and secured until the investigation is completed. We have also told ECI that we will also submit the remaining complaints to them in the next 48 hours.”
Earlier in the day, the ECI wrote a strongly worded letter to Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge over the party’s allegations regarding the Electronic voting machines (EVMs) in recently concluded Haryana Assembly Elections and called the “results unacceptable” comment by party leaders Pawan Khera and Jairam Ramesh “far from a legitimate part of freedom of speech and expression”.