Congress Demands JPC Probe Into Poll Irregularities In TS

· Congress to launch ‘Bring Back Ballot’ movement

· EC, TRS partnered to murder democracy in TS

· Congress to approach High Court, Supreme Court

Hyderabad, December 14: Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) Chief Spokesperson Dr. Sravan Dasoju demanded that a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) should be constituted to probe into the irregularities in the recently concluded elections for Telangana Legislative Assembly.

He was speaking to media persons at Gandhi Bhavan on Friday after the TPCC held a high level meeting to review the party’s performance in Assembly elections. The meeting was attended by TPCC President Capt. N. Uttam Kumar Reddy, ex-CLP leader K. Jana Reddy, Working Presidents Ponnam Prabhakar, Mohd Azharuddin and Kusum Kumar and other senior leaders. The leaders were of the view that the TRS has won the elections by resorting to huge irregularities in connivance with the Election Commission of India. It has been decided to place all the proofs of tampering and other irregularities in the public domain and also furnish the same to the Election Commission of India.

Sravan informed that all the leaders were unanimous in demanding that all elections from now on should be conducted only through ballot. Therefore, it has been decided to launch a movement for ‘Bring Back Ballot’ to save democracy.

The Congress leader said it was unfortunately that the Election Commission has partnered with TRS in murdering the democracy in Telangana. He said a detailed analysis was being done to expose how and where police officials, Returning Officers and other poll staff colluded with the TRS leaders to rig the elections. He said that the ECI did not react to the complaint lodged by Congress party on illegal deletion of 22 lakh voters from the electoral rolls. He said not even notices were served although the Congress party took up the matter up to Supreme Court. He said that the office of Chief Electoral Officer Rajat Kumar was literally turned into the TRS office.

Sravan said that the Telangana Congress leaders would ask the Congress MPs to raise the issue in the ongoing session of Parliament to demand a JPC to probe into the poll irregularities. He said that the Congress party would also approach the Chief Election Commission with evidences to show how results were manipulated by the local poll staff.

He said polling percentage was manipulated in many constituencies. Citing an instance, he said in Narsapur constituency the polling percentage was just 8.83% till afternoon. However, the officials declared 70% polling till 5 pm. He said it takes at least one or two minutes to cast a vote. Therefore, how was it possible that such a large number of people have cast their vote in such a short time? He said the polling percentage was changed many times and shockingly the final polling figures were released to the media only the next day of polling.

Similarly in Mancherial, the polling percentage was 54.75% till 4 pm. By 5 PM it was declared as 65% and finally, the Return Officer declared the figure to be 73%.

He said total number of votes polled should match the total number of votes counted in EVM. But in 114 out of 119 seats, total number of votes in EVMs was higher than the actual number of votes polled on polling day. In five other constituencies, the number of votes counted in EVMs was less than the voted polled. The complete mismatch of figures lead to a suspicion that EVMs were either tampered or additional votes were polled later. There are also allegations of replacement of EVMs on several polling booths. Even otherwise, the Election Commission of India need to answer on mismatch of polled votes and votes counted in EVMs. There were discrepancies in terms of numbers show in Form 17 (C) and the booth wise number shown after the counting. (Maxim News)