BENGALURU, 5 AUG 

After poll watchdog Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) claimed there were discrepancies in the number of votes polled and number of votes counted, another agency Vote for Democracy, Maharashtra, has raised similar concerns.

Its 223-page report titled ‘Vote Manipulation and Misconduct during Voting and Counting’, said “manipulated” figures of votes recovered and counted ensured that 79 seats in 15 states were arguably won by the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) through this hike of votes. 

The break-up of the 79 seats: 18  in Odisha, 11 in Maharashtra, 10 in West Bengal, 7 in Andhra Pradesh, 6 in Karnataka, 5 each in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, 3 each in Bihar, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Telangana, 2 in Assam and 1 each in Arunachal Pradesh, Gujarat and Kerala.

“This sharp and significant spike in percentage of votes coupled with a stark increase of seats suggests that there has been a spurious injection/pumping in of votes. The question is: has the 2024 mandate been stolen from the people?'' the report asked. The report has been authored by poll experts MG Devasahayam, Prof Pyara Lal Garg and Prof Harish Karnick. “Such manipulation could have been possible with Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) being tampered with or EVMs changed or replaced or their functioning was grossly defective,” it added.

In Karnataka, where Congress won 9 seats, BJP 17 and JD(S) 2, the report claimed the voter percentage hike in the State was 4.08% The estimated votes have been spuriously hiked to a staggering 22.33 lakh votes in all of Karnataka amounting to 79,743 votes per constituency.

This alleged dumping of votes and the falsified increase has been in favour of NDA. The constituencies where the ruling NDA won seats by a margin of less than 79,743 votes were taken into consideration. The NDA would have lost six seats if the alleged falsified increase hadn’t taken place: Bengaluru Central where BJP won by just 32,707 votes, Haveri by 43,513 votes, Chitradurga by 48,121 votes, Bagalkot by 68,399, Vijayapura by 77,229 votes and JD(S) in Kolar by 71,388 votes, the report said.

The report said the hike was particularly high in states where BJP/NDA faced a challenge. Despite a hike, BJP still lost the game while in some places like the Andaman Nicobar Islands with a 7.23% hike, NDA/BJP won, the report said.

How the votes might have been manipulated? “The irrational phasing of the elections, the insistence of ECI on the issue of actual turnout figures for each constituency by the next day as promised on 19 April, data being camouflaged, the stand of ECI on the VVPAT demand, the Surat episode where ECI appeared in a hurry to declare the poll result without elections after one Congress candidate was “disqualified” in a controversial move, all put together have raised serious doubts about the voter turnout data being kept from the public, and later substantially altered/changed,'' the report said. —Salar News