New Delhi: The Congress plans to provide legal assistance to its candidates, who have doubts over alleged irregularities in the polling or the counting process in their respective seats during the Lok Sabha polls. “The Central War Room received over 100 complaints related to irregularities in the polling and counting process. The 38 State War Rooms received similar complaints at their level. We have provided the list of complaints to the Election Commission,” Sasikanth Senthil, who managed the AICC War Room during the Lok Sabha elections, told ETV Bharat.
“We are ready to provide legal assistance to all those who may need it,” he said. According to party insiders, the legal recourse in all such cases can be availed through an election petition, which has to be submitted by the respective candidates in the High Courts concerned within 45 days of the declaration of the results.
“Many of our candidates have made up their mind to approach the High Courts over poll irregularities. The opposition was very alert over the issue in this election and so was the public. But such an awareness drive is the responsibility of the EC, not the opposition parties,” said Lok Sabha MP Gaurav Gogoi.
According to party insiders, over the past days, Congress candidates in several seats, including Ramnath Sikarwar in Fatehpur Sikri and Sadal Prasad in Bansgaon in UP and Anil Chopra in Jaipur Rural in Rajasthan expressed their dissatisfaction over either the polling process or the counting of votes.
“In many cases, the voting process was slow, which caused hardship to the voters, who had queued up in very hot weather at the polling stations. Though this is not an irregularity, we have mentioned it to the poll panel. Further irregularities relate to voters not being able to cast their votes, in the counting of votes and the counting of postal ballots,” a senior AICC functionary said.
Before the counting day June 4, the Congress had urged the poll panel to count all the postal ballots first and then only start counting the votes polled through the EVMs, but the EC agreed to the plea with a rider. The EC said that the postal ballots would be counted first, but after half an hour the counting of both the postal and the EVM votes would be done simultaneously.
According to party insiders, BJP’s Rao Rajendra Singh won the Jaipur rural seat by only 1,615 votes and the Congress candidate Anil Chopra had urged the Returning Officer to order a recount, but his plea was rejected. Chopra then came out of the counting centre and urged his supporters protesting outside to maintain the restriant.
Similar scenes were witnessed in Bansgaon where Congress nominee Sadal Prasad urged police officers to address his concerns about counting votes. Prasad lost to BJP’s Kamlesh Paswan by 3,150 votes.
In Fatehpur Sikri Congress nominee Ramnath Sikarwar has urged the Agra Collector to order a count of VVPATS as per the Supreme Court directive as his plea for a recount of votes had not been granted earlier. “Not only us, some SP candidates are also unhappy over the counting of votes in their seats. They will take recourse separately,” said a senior AICC functionary.
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