In its 1st June press release, the EC had also said that the authenticated data would be released in two to three months. But four months later, that is yet to happen.

Incidentally, the Election Commission's 1st June press release was not published voluntarily.

In fact, it was a response to an article published by The Quint on 31 May that revealed a mismatch in the number of EVM votes polled and counted on the EC’s website in over 370 Lok Sabha constituencies – of which in 220 constituencies surplus votes were counted and in the rest, deficit votes were recorded.

The Election Commission in its press release explained the mismatch by claiming that “All these figures are provisional… the data is estimated and subject to change.”

And then, mysteriously, a few days later, all the mismatching figures had vanished… and matching figures had been uploaded in their place.

If the mismatched figures that The Quint had seen on 30 May were part of the provisional data, are the matching figures posted on 1 June on the EC’s website authenticated?

If yes, why was the Election Commission still describing these matching figures as ‘provisional’ data? This also raises several other questions:

Why is the EC providing only state-wise voting data and not constituency-wise voting data?

And what was the reason behind the mismatched data in over 370 constituencies? All serious questions linked to the reliability of our election process.

So, we ask again, why hasn’t the EC uploaded the final results of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections on its website? What is the holdup?

Why are the people of the world’s largest democracy being deprived of authentic election results?

Is it just ‘sarkari’ red tape, or is there more to it?

The Quint has asked the Election Commission ALL of these questions – but have got no reply as of yet.