Hyderabad: The BSP candidate from Ibrahimpatnam Assembly constituency, Malreddy Ranga Reddy, who has lost the elections, held discussions with legal experts and senior advocates to take their opinion on the issue of EVM tampering in the city.
Senior advocate of Supreme Court Rakesh Gunjal and several High advocates took part in the meeting. Speaking on the occasion, Supreme Court Advocate Rakesh Gunjal said that any contested candidate could approach the high court under article 226 of the Indian constitution if they felt that there were defects in the EVMs or EVM tampering has taken place in the recent assembly elections. He also said that the election commission officials should also count VVPATs along with the votes cast. High court advocate Arun said the doubts being cast by the people of the state against the EVMs could be put to rest if the vvpats were counted by the officials. He said that the high court had asked the election commission to count all the vvpats.
Commenting on the issue, Ranga reddy said that all the voters were aware of the decision of the election commission to keep vvpats and added that the voters could see the vvpats if there was any malfunction in the vvpats. He said that there was a difference of 30 votes in his constituency when the vvpats of two booths were counted. He also wondered at the decision of the election commission to declare rival TRS party candidate as the winner after stopping his result. He said that he had approached the court to protect democracy in the state and the country. He claimed that the election commission officer didn’t heed to his repeated request to count the vvpats . He also claimed that he would win the elections if the vvpats were counted in his constituency. Noting that he has complete trust over the high court, he said that the high court had asked the election commission to come up with all evidences related to the vvpats.(NSS)
