The Congress has said that the Lok Sabha elections in Telangana on April 11 might have been officially rigged.
Addressing the media at Gandhi Bhavan on Tuesday, Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) official spokesperson Syed Nizamuddiin accused the Election Commission of tampering with the polling figures to benefit the ruling TRS.
"The difference between the polling percentage till 5 pm and the final voter turnout is huge. The election authorities might have adjusted the figures to suit the requirement of the TRS," he alleged.
The Congress leader also displayed two different video clips pertaining to Telangana wherein some unidentified people are seen taking away EVMs in an auto-rickshaw and a car. He said that many such clips of private individuals possessing EVMs were in circulation in the social media. This clearly strengthened the suspicions that the EVMs had been manipulated, and the silence and inaction of the Election Commission on such complaints proved that the elections were officially rigged, he claimed.
"If the Election Commission doesn't want to hold the elections in a fair manner, then it should directly give the winning certificates to the candidates of the ruling party immediately after they file their nominations. It need not enact the drama of holding elections by wasting hundreds of crores of public money and everyone's time," he said.
Nizamuddin demanded that the Election Commission place booth-wise and hour-wise figures of polling for all the 17 Lok Sabha constituencies, in the public domain. He said that these figures should then be cross-checked with those obtained from the CCTV footage of the polling stations, and must match with the number of votes in the EVMs. In case of any mismatch, there should be re-polling in the entire constituency, he said.