Narrow-margin seats: Tejashwi wants mail-in vote recount


Written by Santosh Singh | Patna |

Updated: November 13, 2020 1:33:57 pm


tejashwi yadav, tejashwi yadav on vote by mail count, bihar elections 2020, bihar election results, nitish kumar, indian expressTejashwi Yadav addresses the MLA party in Patna on Thursday. (AND ME)

Tejashwi Yadav said Thursday that the RJD could move the court if the Election Commission cannot satisfactorily respond to inquiries from 20 Mahagathbandhan candidates who lost by very narrow margins, and demanded that postal ballots in these constituencies be counted and broken down. the valid votes in detail. and invalid votes provided. However, he did not specify which 20 seats he was talking about.

At a joint press conference, also attended by the head of the Congressional campaign committee, Akhilesh Prasad Singh, Tejashwi said: “We strongly believe that we (the Mahagathbandhan) won not 110 but 130 seats. The EC did not abide by its own rule of counting votes by mail first. There were at least 20 seats in which our candidates narrowly lost. We are asked to provide proof (of the charges). But it is the EC that has to give proof … the complete videotape of the vote count by mail. We also wonder how 500 to 700 to 900 postal ballots were declared invalid ”. He added that postal votes are mainly cast by professionals, “who know how to use them.” “The EC has to satisfy the inquiries of our candidates or else we could move to court.”

The RJD leader, who was the CM candidate of Mahagathbandhan, said there was a difference of “a little over 12,000 votes” between the alliance and the NDA. “How did these 12,000 votes result in a defeat for us?” Tejashwi said, claiming the use of “Chhal aur bal (deception and force) ”. The RJD tweeted that while the Mahagathbandhan had garnered 1,56,88,458 votes, the NDA’s tally was 1,57,00,728 votes.

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Elsewhere, Tejashwi, meeting with its newly elected MLA on Thursday, advised JD (U) leader Nitish Kumar “not to accept the main ministerial position if there is some morality left in him.” Asked if the RJD had reached out to the NDA allies Vikassheel Insaan Party and Hindustan Awami Morcha (S) in an attempt to put the numbers together, Tejashwi said the two sides should also realize that the mandate was to “change.” “They have to make a decision.”

He added that while Nitish claimed to have brought RJD to power in 2015, he had now finished in a poor third place, with 43 seats. “Despite all the odds, the RJD is still the biggest party … Nitish Kumar must not try to seize power through the back door. If he has some morality left, he must not accept the CM presidency and must respect the mandate, which is for change ”.

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Dipankar Bhattacharya, the general secretary of the CPI (ML), which is part of the Mahagathbandhan, said they would take a call on evidence-based legal remedies requested from the counting officers. D Raja, the general secretary of the CPI, another Mahagathbandhan ally, said there were “flaws” in the EVMs, while the certificates were delivered late.

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Tejashwi played down the AIMIM factor and poor performance by Congress as reasons for missing a government formation.

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