New Delhi: The Congress strategists revived the 2018 resolution in favour of ballot papers a day ahead of the key Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting which is likely to discuss the road map for a national-level agitation being planned against the role of EVMs.
The CWC on Friday has been called by Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge to review the recent electoral losses in Haryana and Maharashtra which shocked the high command and for which the party managers have blamed the alleged tampering of the EVMs by the BJP, said party insiders, adding that a nationwide movement against the electronic voting machines was also likely to be discussed by the top body.
"Not only during the recent Haryana and Maharashtra Assembly elections, but in the 2022 Gujarat Assembly elections too we found that the role of the EVMs was doubtful. In all three states, the BJP was in power. They tampered with the machines to win the elections," CWC member Jagdish Thakor told ETV Bharat.
“The results in Haryana and Maharashtra were against our feedback from the ground that we were set to form a government on our own and with our allies respectively. In Gujarat, we were expecting around 65 seats but we got just 17 seats and the saffron party won a record number despite strong anti-incumbency. How is that possible election after election," he said.
According to party insiders, once the blueprint of protests gets approved by the CWC, the INDIA bloc allies will be taken on board as they too have been expressing concern over the issue for long.
The doubts within the Congress over the role of the EVMs had been overcome, said the party insiders, and cited that even senior MPs like Shashi Tharoor and Karti Chidambaram, who had been speaking in favour of the EVMs, had been alerted to align with the official line.
The CWC member and former Gujarat chief said the time had come for a nationwide movement against the alleged tampering of EVMs by the saffron party as there was a broad consensus within the grand old party over the issue.
“We passed a resolution against the EVMs in the 2018 plenary session after Rahul Gandhi became party chief. Later, the issue was also mentioned in the 2022 Udaipur Nav Sankalp Declaration but there were some reservations within the party whether to flag the issue or not. Now, the entire party is on the same page over the role of the EVMs. Before the machines came, elections in India were conducted using ballot papers which are used by a large number of developed countries across the world. Why can't the same be done here? We need to start a big nationwide movement against the EVMs,” said Thakor.
In Haryana, the Congress was sure of sweeping the 2024 elections by winning over 60/90 seats but got only 37, 9 short of a simple majority mark of 46. The party managers later complained to the Election Commission of India (ECI) over alleged irregularities including the role of EVMs which were found to be charged 99 per cent even after a full day of voting in several locations but nothing happened.
Maharashtra, where the MVA comprising Congress-Sena UBT-NCP-SP expected to get around 160 out of 288 seats, got only 56 whereas the ruling Mahayuti comprising BJP-Shiv Sena-NCP swept the elections despite anti-incumbency. Following the poll debacle, Maharashtra unit chief Nana Patole urged Kharge to flag the role of EVMs based on feedback from booth workers.
After the Congress recently lost the Vav seat by-election in Gujarat, the grand old party, which had won only 17 seats out of 182 in the 2022 assembly elections, came down to 11. In contrast, the BJP's tally went up to 162 from 156, as five Congress MLAs had earlier switched sides and four later won the by-polls. The BJP, which won 99 seats in 2017, went into the 2022 elections with 111 MLAs. The Congress, hit by defections in the run-up to the polls, contested with 59 MLAs, down from 77 in 2017.
