Leaders from the Shiv Sena (UBT) have announced their plans to approach the Supreme Court over a Lok Sabha seat lost by 48 votes. The Uddhav Thackeray-led party insisted that winning candidate Ravindra Waikar should be stopped from taking oath as the Lok Sabha member.
“We have won Amol Kirtikar’s seat and we will go to court. EC is not the Election Commission it has become ‘Easily Compromised’. If there was no EVM, BJP would not have won even 40 seats,” said Aaditya Thackeray.
Mumbai poll officials had issued a clarification on Sunday after a report alleged EVM manipulation via cellphone. The Vanrai police has since booked polling personnel Dinesh Gurav and Mangesh Pandilkar — the brother-in-law of Shiv Sena MP Shiv Ravindra Waikar — for using a mobile phone at a counting centre in Goregaon on June 4. Waikar had defeated Shiv Sena (UBT) candidate Amol Kirtikar by 48 votes during the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections — the lowest victory margin in the country.
According to a Mid-day report, the phone was connected to the Electronic Voting Machine and used to generate an ‘unlocking’ OTP. The publication said that the police had found an “Electronically Transmitted Postal Ballot System for Service Voter which is also used after using EVM machines”. It claimed that Gurav had used the mobile phone in question to generate an OTP. Allegedly Kirtikar had lost his lead once the votes on the ETPBS were counted.
“Irregularities in vote counting started after Amol Kirtikar’s 19th round. There are a total of 14 tables for counting on each MP’s seat. There is an ARO officer near each EVM counting table after each round of counting, the final information is given to the ARO but after 19 rounds of counting, the ARO was not informed. The calls that were coming repeatedly on the election officer’s phone due to which he was going to the washroom repeatedly. We know whose call came,” added fellow Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Anil Parab.
He said that the party was yet to receive CCTV footage from the area and demanded that the Election Commission investigate the matter.
(With inputs from agencies)
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Published: 17 Jun 2024, 03:48 PM IST
