Maharashtra civic polls: Repolling in six Zillas next week

The State Election Commission (SEC) has announced re-polling in eight polling booths at six zilla parishads after receiving the complaints about faulty Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). The re-polling in Sangli, Kolhapur, Beed, Nashik, Jalna and Parbhani ZPs will take place on February 12.

The voting for 27 zilla parishads and 305 panchayat samitis was held on Tuesday, February 7 across the state, and recorded a 64% turnout.

“We were following the procedure for EVMs as per the SEC directions. On Tuesday afternoon, a voter complained about the machine saying that when he pressed the second number button, the machine showed light on the third number’,” said Vijay Patil, Assistant Returning Officer (ARO) from Kagal district Kolhapur. “We sealed the machine and put another one in place,” added Patil. 

Another official from Walwa district, Sangli also spoke about similar incidents. “Some candidates and voters claimed that EVM is faulty so we sealed it,” said Vivek Jadhav, ARO from Walwa.

He added that a report on it was submitted to the SEC and later, received the directions about conducting the re-polls in that area.

The SEC added that the re-polls were announced for conducting fair elections and stated that the facts will come out after the investigation. “The decision of conducting re-polls was taken on the basis of reports received from officials,” said a senior official from SEC. “This will not be the case in the BMC polls as the EVMs are new,” the official responded to the question of preventive measures being taken by SEC for BMC polls.