Bhubaneswar, (Reporterspen), June 21: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has granted Dipali Das, the BJD MLA candidate from Jharsuguda, permission to verify the EVM/VVPAT memory in her constituency in Odisha.
Dipali, who won a bypoll in 2023 after the passing of her father and former health minister Naba Das, contested the recent elections but lost to BJP’s Tankadhar Tripathy by 1,333 votes in Jharsuguda, where 1,297 votes were cast as NOTA.
Expressing her perspective, Dipali emphasized her right as a candidate to seek verification of EVMs due to suspicions of irregularities in some polling booths, citing a Supreme Court directive mandating the rechecking of 5% of EVMs per assembly segment.
Additionally, the ECI received a total of 8 applications related to the General Election for Lok Sabha 2024 and 3 applications for General Election to State Legislative Assemblies, including from BJD in Jharsuguda and YSRCP in Gajapathinagaram and Ongole, encompassing 26 polling stations. These applications requested checking and verification of burnt memory/microcontroller of EVMs following the announcement of election results.
According to the ECI’s notification, the verification process can commence within 4 weeks of confirming the status of Election Petitions filed in the respective constituencies from the Registrars of the respective High Courts by CEOs. The Commission will issue a technical Standard Operating Procedure outlining the methodology for checking and verifying the burnt memory/microcontroller of EVM units before the election petition period concludes on July 19.
