'EC stands for Eradicated Credibility', says Oppn after their demands were rejected by poll panel

NEW DELHI: Opposition parties on Wednesday slammed the Election Commission and alleged it lost its credibility since it rejected the demand of 22 parties for 100% counting of VVPAT slips in case discrepancies arose in tallying them with the EVM count.
Reacting to EC’s decision, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said the poll panel’s decision was not formally communicated to the opposition parties and added they were not hopeful of getting a detailed reason for the rejection of their demand.
Mocking the EC, Congress also said the poll panel now stood for “Eradicated Credibility”, while EVMs have come to mean “Electronic Victory Machines” for BJP.
“Our demands were rejected by the EC...In the 15-20 orders of rejection that we have got, not more than 4 lines have been used to give explanation or reason....You are mandatorily obliged to count 5 VVPATs-EVMs in one assembly segment. We said it should be done at the beginning and not at the end of the counting process. There is no rocket science in it, logically it should be done at the beginning and not after 5, 7, 10, 14 rounds of counting. When all the results are informally known, then sample check is of no use,” Singhvi said.
CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury said the Election Commission's rejection of the Opposition demand to first count the VVPAT slips went against the “spirit” of a Supreme Court order on the devices. “This goes against the spirit of the Supreme Court Order on VVPATs delivered before polling began. If the process has been so long drawn for the sake of integrity of the electoral process, why is EC not adhering to the basic principle of testing the sample first?”, Yechury said on Twitter.
The Election Commission on Wednesday rejected the demand of opposition parties seeking to tally VVPAT slips for an entire assembly segment if any sample failed to tally with votes polled on EVMs.
The decision comes a day after leaders of 22 opposition parties, led by TDP chief and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, met EC officials and alleged discrepancies in EVM machines. They also demanded that the EVM-VVPAT tally should be done at the beginning of the process of counting.
Congress leader Udit Raj, on the other hand, raised questions over the manner in which the Supreme Court had dealt with complaints of EVM rigging and the opposition’s demand of tallying EVM count with VVPAT slips.
“Why doesn't Supreme Court want VVPAT slips to be counted; is it involved in the rigging too? When all government work has come to a standstill for the last three months on account of elections, how willa delay of two to three days in counting matter,” Raj asked in Hindi on Twitter.
Later, however, he clarified that he was not casting aspersions on the apex court but merely “raising concerns”.