Updated: November 13, 2020 8:09:14 am
Voters undergo a thermal test at a polling station when they arrive to cast their votes for the second phase of the Bihar Assembly elections in Muzaffarpur district on Tuesday, November 3, 2020 (PTI photo).
While the RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav claimed Thursday that rejected postal ballots could have made a difference Between the victory and defeat of the Mahagathbandhan, Electoral Commission records show that in only one Assembly constituency in Bihar, Hilsa, the margin of victory was less than the number of invalid mail-in votes. And, following the RJD candidate’s request, all postal ballots in this seat, and not just the rejected ones, were re-counted and determined to be in order, Bihar’s Director of Elections (CEO) told The Indian Express.
RJD’s Atri Muni lost Hilsa’s seat to JD (U) by 12 votes. Of the total 551 mail-in votes received for this position, 182 were declared invalid. “The final candidate (Muni) asked for a recount of the EVM votes as well as the postal ballots. The Regulator (RO) rejected the first lawsuit as its accountants were present at the time of EVM’s results and seemed satisfied with the process. To satisfy the candidate, the OR allowed the counting of 551 votes by mail, including invalid ones. The result was unchanged, ”said HR Srinivas, CEO of Bihar.
Tejashwi asked Thursday why many postal ballots had been declared invalid, claiming this was done without justification, especially in the seats where the Mahagathbandhan candidates lost by very narrow margins.
According to data shared by the CEO of Bihar, of the total of 243 seats, only 11 (Hilsa, Barbigha, Ramgarh, Matihani, Bhorey, Dehri, Bachhwara, Chakai, Kurhani, Bakhri and Parbatta) obtained a winning margin of less than 1,000 votes . . Of these seats, four were won by the JD (U), three by the RJD and one by the BJP, CPI, LJP and an Independent candidate. In other words, the RJD lost only in two districts decided by less than 1,000 votes.
Narrow voting margins in electoral districts.
With the exception of Hilsa, the margin of victory in the other 10 seats was lower than that of the rejected ballots (see box). While candidates for the Ramgarh, Matihani, Bhorey, Dehri and Parbatta seats also requested a recount, the RO rejected their request as the margin of victory was greater than the rejected mail-in votes. The OR gave a reasoned order in each case, the CEO said.
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On Tejashwi’s allegation of excessive delay in delivering certificates to the winning candidates, Srinivas said: “At the end of the EVM count, five polling stations are randomly chosen and their VVPAT vouchers are verified against the EVM count. Counting VVPAT slips is tedious and time consuming work. Apart from that, in some cases, VVPAT ballots also had to be counted when the Control Unit did not show the result and when the voting officer forgot to remove the mock votes from the poll. So while according to the candidate the EVM rounds are over, the actual results declaration cannot occur until the VVPAT ballots are counted and the data from all polling stations is entered into the CE software. These reasons contribute to the time it takes to deliver the certificates to the winning candidates ”.
At a press conference Thursday night, the CEO said: “We meet all the standards prescribed by us. The elections were free, fair, transparent and we recorded the counting procedure on video ”.
In Delhi, Chief Elections Commissioner Sunil Arora also addressed allegations of wrongdoing, saying that Bihar’s chief executive had responded to all charges. He said the EC had held four press conferences in the day just to respond to various aspects of the process.
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“We do not respond to comments made by political entities. It’s their decision, what they said, why they said it. The final decision rests with the people, ”he said.
Responding to a query about the “slow count,” Arora said it was due to 33,000 more polling stations due to Covid-19, resulting in an additional 63% EVM.
© The Indian Express (P) Ltd
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