It said the party is free to file an election petition in the state high court if it wants to verify votes cast in Punjab polls with data of paper trail
Days after the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) reiterated its charges of alleged tampering of electronic voting machines (EVMs) in Punjab Assembly elections, the Election Commission (EC) on Sunday said asked the party to rather "introspect" on its performance.
In a strongly-worded letter, the EC said it is for the AAP "to introspect as to why your party could not perform as per your expectations and it is unfair on your part to attribute unsatisfactory poll performance of your party to the alleged tamperability of EVMS."
Stating that EVMs are not tamperable under the effective safeguards, it said the party is free to file an election petition in the state high court if it wants to verify votes cast in Punjab polls with data of paper trail.
In its complaint filed before the poll watchdog, AAP had fanned apprehensions over the credibility of EVMs, drawing comparisons of other countries that have stopped using EVMs. "Such comparisons are both misplaced and misguided," stated the Commission. "The software in the EC-EVM chip is one-time programmable (OTP) and burnt into the chip at the time of manufacture. Nothing can be written on the chip after manufacture."
It said that it had received no credible material during and at the time of polling to show alleged tampering in EVMs, nor any discrepancy was observed in result of mock poll.
It said the Supreme Court had never expressed any doubt that election process is rigged by use of EVMs, and termed AAP's allegation "wrong and imaginary extrapolation of Supreme Court's order."
The party had earlier filed a petition in the Panjab and Haryana High Court which was dismissed after the Court's directive to EC to ensure adequate security. However, the Punjab unit of the party stood its stand and sought validation of all EVMs used with VVPAT (Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail) system. AAP MLA HS Phooka demanded use of traditional method of ballot papers in all future elections till the time the doubts about EVMs are cleared.
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