The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Thursday, December 21, once again raised the bogey of tampering of electronic voting machines (EVMs), claiming that they had been tinkered with to the BJP's advantage in the just-concluded Gujarat Assembly elections and that this was the true face of "Modi magic".
Patel quota agitation leader Hardik Patel had both before and after the counting for the election — which took place on December 18 — claimed something similar. He had said that the BJP had enlisted the help of 140 engineers of an Ahmedabad-based firm to crack the source code of 5,000 EVMs.
He had said after the election results showed the BJP had won a majority in Gujarat: "There has been tampering in EVMs in Surat, Rajkot and Ahmedabad. Hence the gap is very less wherever tampering happened. EVMs are hackable."
What the AAP said
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, AAP official spokesperson Sanjay Singh said the Gujarat chief electoral officer has apparently claimed vote mismatch in an EVM that was used in Booth 85 in the Dwarka Assembly constituency in Gujarat.
He said: "The number of votes registered on voting day in that EVM was 496, but during counting, it showed that 532 votes had been polled."
Singh added: "And there are many more EVMs that showed more votes that had been polled. Is this Modi magic?" The term "Modi magic" is used by many quarters to describe the influence that the prime minister has over the electorate, which apparently helps the BJP win elections.
The AAP leader said: "Whenever we raise the issue of EVM-tampering, there are claims that we are trying to shield our loss and that we do not understand the democracy of this country." It may be noted that the all 33 AAP candidates who contested the Gujarat Assembly election lost their deposits because they could not get even a sixth of the total votes polled in their respective constituencies.
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