There had been complaints from all quarters over EVM tampering, and both candidates of various parties and voters were crying foul, the Party allaged.
Six Telangana Congress leaders said that two videos that went viral on social media (and that were mailed to the Election Commission by former MLA Marri Shashidhar Reddy) immediately after the counting of votes on February 5 proved that there had been extensive tampering of the EVMs to the advantage of the candidates of the ruling TRS, and that the tampering had happened to such an extent that the entire GHMC election process should be declared null and void.
The Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) lodged a complaint with the Telangana State Election Commission to this effect on Wednesday.
The Congress leaders Marri Shashidhar Reddy, former home minister Sabitha Indra Reddy, Rajya Sabha member Renuka Chowdhary, Lok Sabha member Nandi Yellaiah, former MP Anjan Kumar Yadav and TPCC official spokesperson G Niranjan in their complaint mentioned that there had been an outpour of distress and disappointment from all quarters over the tampering, and that candidates belonging to different political parties, independents and voters alike were crying foul.
They said that apart from what those two videos focusing on the 142-Addagutta and 130-Subashnagar wards showed, there was tampering in almost all the wards of the GHMC.
For instance, the Congress was shown to have secured just nine votes in the 77-Jambagh ward where Vikram Gowd was the Congress candidate, but his family itself had cast 10 votes there, and there were more than 200 of his relatives living in that area who, too, had voted for him, the Congress claimed.
The EC had already received many complaints from individual candidates and also from all the contesting candidates of some wards about the tampering of EVMs, the Congress leaders said.
They claimed that there had been an inordinate delay in the shifting of the EVMs and related material from the counting areas to their storage areas after the counting process was completed. For instance, the EVMs were not shifted from the Kotla Vijayabhaskara Reddy Stadium to the GHMC ward office in Chudi till yesterday - four days after the counting was completed. Also, they were being transported in open trucks, and the locks on many steel trunks were not sealed. Some of the Congress leaders went there personally to check, but satisfactory answers could not be elicited from the officers on duty there.
They said that there were several other factors which reinforced the suspicion that the EVMs had been tampered with. First and foremost, the TRS minister K T Rama Rao had been claiming for more than a month that the TRS would win 100 seats, and even went to the extent of saying that he would resign otherwise. The final tally was 99, and no pollster or political pundit had ever been able to make such an accurate forecast. This minister also happened to hold the IT portfolio, and there was a big question mark on everyone's mind, they said.
Then, in many wards, the results were totally different from the survey and intelligence reports. And the claims made by several TRS candidates about the number of votes that would be polled in their favour and the margins by which they would win were astonishingly accurate.
The leaders also said that the decision of the State Election Commission to do away with NOTA in the GHMC elections was a gross violation of the constitutional provisions and rules. Every citizen had a right not to cast his/her vote by opting for NOTA, and had been denied this right, they said.
They also mentioned in their complaint that there were a large number of ministers, MLAs, MLCs and other functionaries camping in different wards intimidating voters into voting for the TRS, failing which they would face dire consequences, like denial of pensions, double bedroom houses, other government benefits and various development activities. Even the Seemandhra people were targeted in a manner that instilled fear in their minds. The ruling TRS had taken advantage of the fact that the counting of the votes would done polling station-wise (and so there would be granular visibility of how the voting happened at a polling station level) to instill fear in the minds of the voters.
They alleged that the partisan attitude of the officials, particularly the police at the ground level, was very evident in many cases. There had been instances of important local police officials not even answering phone calls made by senior Party leaders, and not acting when informed about certain malpractices being committed. In some cases, the policemen themselves distributed money and liquor, they claimed.
They informed the SEC that CCTV cameras should have been used to monitor all sensitive areas, but the SEC had failed to ensure this. The elections had not been free and fair, and the Congress leaders felt that the SEC had failed to ensure that, and hence the elections needed to be declared null and void.
They said that all these issues would be brought to the notice of the High Court, and the Court would be urged to give strict instructions to ensure that the EVMs be kept intact and under constant monitoring by CCTV cameras.
Meanwhile, the Congress candidate for the Narayankhed Assembly constituency by-election P Sanjeeva Reddy urged the Election Commission to use EVMs along with VVPATs as per the law, and to ensure that the elections were conducted in a free and fair manner.