EVMs were not tampered in Karnataka bypolls, says CM Siddaramaiah

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Thursday said that in the two bypolls in the state, the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) had not been tampered with.

Out of the nine assembly by-polls held in five states, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday registered victory at four places including Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Assam. 

The ruling Congress in Karnataka retained both the Assembly seats of Nanjangud and Gundlupet where the bypolls held on Sunday. Congress' Kalale N Keshavamurthy defeated his nearest rival V Srinivas Prasad (BJP) by over 21,000 votes in Nanjangud. In Gundlupet, Geetha Mahadevaprasad (Congress) trounced BJP's C S Niranjan Kumar by over 10,000 votes, an election official said.

The Election Commission had on Wednesday issued a challenge to all political parties to prove that the EVMs can be tampered with. This came after Congress, Left, AAP and others claimed that the EVMs were tampered with to favour the BJP.  A delegation of leaders of various political parties, led by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi, had met President Pranab Mukherjee and raised issues of alleged EVM tampering. 

On Thursday, the Supreme Court issued notices to the Centre and the Election Commission on a plea by BSP challenging use of EVMs without paper trail.  SC asked the  Centre and the EC to respond to BSP's plea and fixed the matter for hearing on May 8.

(With agency inputs)