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Updated: Jun 03, 2019 20:51 IST

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday expressed reservations over electronic voting machines used in the Lok Sabha elections and urged opposition parties to unitedly demand the return of ballot papers for polls.

She also urged the opposition parties in the country to set up a fact-finding committee to probe possible tampering of electronic voting machines (EVM) in the Lok Sabha elections.

Banerjee who also heads the Trinamool Congress said that her party will launch padayatras across the state to raise the demand for abolishing EVMs and restoring ballots in the country.

“We don’t want machines. We want ballots. Give us back our ballot (system). Save democracy,” said Mamata Banerjee after the meeting of party MPs, legislators and ministers.

“We will spread the movement all over the country. We will urge all opposition parties to raise this demand. Remember, the US, too, has moved away from the EVMs,” said the TMC chief.

Two padayatras would raise the slogan for a return to the ballot. The processions would culminate in TMC’s Martyr’s Day programme on July 21 when the party’s annual flagship political event is held in Kolkata.

Congress Rajya Sabha MP Pradip Bhattacharya said that his party would support the campaign and take part in it.

“In 1984, Congress won 16 (Lok Sabha) seats (from Bengal). In 2009, there was an alliance between the TMC and Congress (and won 25 seats). But no questions were raised since people voted spontaneously,” remarked Mamata.

Incidentally, on January 19, after the rally of 23 opposition parties in Kolkata’s Brigade Parade Ground, the Bengal chief minister had announced that a four-member committee comprising Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Akhilesh Yadav, Satish Mishra and Arvind Kejriwal would draft the opposition’s arguments against it.

The TMC chief said on Monday that her party’s MLAs would begin a door-to-door campaign to establish public contact.

In the recent Lok Sabha elections, the BJP made deep inroads in Bengal winning 18 seats - a 900 per cent rise from its tally of two (also its historic high) in 2014. The TMC’s tally dropped from 34 in 2014 to 22.

The TMC vote share stood at 43.28% and the BJP was breathing down its neck at 40.25%, recording a jump of 23.23 percentage points over 2014. The TMC voteshare was 39.79% in 2014.

Bengal has been simmering in political violence since the election dates were announced and the bloodletting did not stop even after the results.

Analysts have predicted a tough fight for the state’s ruling party in the 2021 Assembly polls. “Mamata Banerjee will find it difficult to keep her flock together. It appears that the fall of the government is just a matter of time,” said psephologist Bidwanath Chakraborty and professor of political science.

Slamming the BJP, Mamata Banerjee said that in Tarakeswar, the saffron party workers threw away the national flag from a government (read Malpaharpur panchayat) office and replaced it with their party flag. In the same area, BJP workers painted the word “Ram” on a government logo (of Biswa Bangla), she said.

“In these cases, the law will take its own course,” said the chief minister.

The BJP hit back at her and dared her to hold elections to 19 civic bodies.

“Why are you not holding elections to the 19 civic bodies where polls are due? Why are you installing administrators there? Don’t complain, or agitate, if someone installs an administrator (read President’s Rule) above you for this throttling of democracy,” BJP Bengal unit vice-president Jay Prakash Majumdar said.