They said there is doubt in the minds of many people about the EVM system being fair. (Express Photo: Vishal Srivastav)As many as 21 Opposition parties Friday came together and decided to approach the Election Commission on Monday to demand that at least 50 per cent of the VVPATs or paper trails be tallied with the EVM results in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections. They said there is doubt in the minds of many people about the EVM system being fair.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi, TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu, National Conference leader Omar Abdullah, NCP chief Sharad Pawar, CPI leader D Raja and DMK’s Kanimozhi were among the leaders who attended the meeting. The BSP and SP, which recently announced an alliance in Uttar Pradesh without the Congress, also attended the meeting, as did the AAP.
Saying “everybody is quite excited to work together”, Rahul said the Opposition has “put together a document” which will be submitted to the EC. Congress leaders said the main demand would be that at least 50 per cent of the VVPATs or paper trails should be tallied with the EVM results in the Lok Sabha elections.
“The main issue with the EVMs is that there is a doubt in the minds of many, many people about the fairness of the EVM system. And so we want to create a backup system so that people can be certain about what is going on. It is about building the confidence of the people in the electoral system,” Rahul said.
Apart from EVMs, the announcements made in the Budget also came up for discussion. Rahul said the farmer income support scheme was an insult to the farmers and argued that the agrarian crisis, lack of jobs, attack on institutions and corruption by the Prime Minister in Rafale deal would be the main campaign issues in the elections.
“I don’t think giving farmers Rs 17 a day is adequately addressing anything. I think it is an insult to the Indian farmer…there could not be a bigger insult than this. And as far as jobs are concerned, everybody knows what has happened. We are on a 45-year high on unemployment. So there is complete failure on these two fronts which are critical fronts for the nation.”
Asked about remarks by BJP leaders that the Budget is the government’s “second surgical strike”, Rahul said “the surgical strike is going to happen in the next couple of months with Modi and the government. There is going to be one surgical strike after other – on Rafale, on demonetisation, on jobs, on agriculture.” He said all the parties have agreed to discuss in detail the issues of jobs, agriculture and attack on institutions. “We are going to meet and find solutions to these problems,” he said.
Those who attended the meeting include Derek O’Brien (Trinamool Congress), T K Rangarajan and Mohd Salim (CPI-M), Danish Ali (JD-S), Sharad Yadav (LJD), Manoj Jha (RJD), Sanjay Singh (AAP), Jayant Chaudhary (RLD) and N K Premachandran (RSP). Ahmed Patel, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mallikarjun Kharge and A K Antony represented the Congress.
