india

Updated: Jan 24, 2019 11:27 IST

Amid call for conducting 2019 Lok Sabha elections through ballot paper, Chief Election Commissioner of India Sunil Arora on Thursday made it clear that the election body is not going back to “the of ballot papers”.

In the days following a claim made by a US-based cyber expert that the EVMs were tampered with in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, parties including the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Samajwadi Party (SP) demanded that the Election Commission should go back to the old practice of conducting elections through ballot papers.

However, speaking at an event in New Delhi, Arora rejected the demands saying, “I would like to make it very clear that we are not going back to the era of ballot papers.”

“We will continue to use EVMs and VVPATs. We are open to any criticism and feedback from any stakeholder including political parties. At the same time, we are not going to be intimidated, bullied or coerced into giving up these and start era of ballot papers,” Arora was quoted by news agency ANI as saying.

Earlier, the Election Commission had approached the Delhi Police seeking probe against Syed Shuja, the US-based person who claimed that the EVMs were tampered with in 2014 parliamentary polls. Shuja made the claim at a press conference held in London on Monday via video-conferencing. The Delhi Police has registered an FIR regarding allegations of hacking of EVMs and rigging of polls.

Following Shuja’s press conference, BSP chief Mayawati had asked the Election Commission to revert to ballot papers in 2019 Lok Sabha elections to ensure free and fair polls. Her new ally, Akhilesh Yadav, the SP president, too echoed the sentiment saying that reliability of the EVMs had come under the question.

The Congress also sought clarification from the Election Commission over the claims made by Shuja. However, the BJP and the JD(U) backed continued use of the EVMs in elections. The BJP alleged that the Congress was behind Shuja’s press conference in London while JD(U) president and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said that EVMs fitted with VVPAT (voter-verified paper audit trail) were “perfectly fine”.