Supreme Court orders mock poll rerun on Kasaragod voting day amid complaints of BJP favouritism in machines

NEW DELHI: Supreme Court intervened in the complaint that during the Mock Poll held on Wednesday in the Kasaragod constituency, votes that were not cast in some machines went to the BJP. The Election Commission has been ordered to conduct the mock poll again at 6 am on the 26th, the day of voting. The voting machines should be thoroughly checked, and any extra votes found should be rectified.

Complaints were made that votes favoured the BJP in four voting machines on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the Election Commission denied the incident in court yesterday.

LDF candidate M V Balakrishnan's chief polling agent, UDF candidate Rajmohan Unnithan's chief polling agent and Chief Electoral Officer District Collector K Impasekaran filed a complaint.

A bench comprising justices Sanjeev Khanna and Dipankar Dutta gave verbal directions to the commission while hearing the EVM-VVPAT case yesterday. Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the petitioners in the case, drew the court's attention to online media news on the Kasaragod issue. Commission counsel Maninder Singh denied the allegation. The court was informed that the presiding officer had submitted a report, and a detailed report could be submitted later.

Out of 228 voting machines tested in the first round of mock polls, 20 machines malfunctioned simultaneously. The problem was noticed on four machines, which persisted even after double-checking. There are ten options to vote on each machine. When each option was pressed once, it was found that two votes were registered on four machines. A thousand votes were cast on these machines during the test. The complaint was that even when the BJP symbol was not pressed, the vote was recorded in the party's account. A lotus print also appeared for the absent vote. The agents then demanded that these machines be replaced.