Former state information commissioner and senior Congress leader Ashok Mehta said the leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi has opened the eyes of the Election Commission of India (ECI) by exposing the ‘vote theft’, but the commission is trying to cover up its mistakes by targeting the Congress MP.
In a statement issued on Monday, when the Opposition took out a protest march in Delhi, Mehta said if the ECI is honest, then it should consider this as feedback and investigate every constituency with transparency, instead of targeting Gandhi.
“Gandhi’s team worked on ground and collected data of a Lok Sabha constituency in Karnataka. On the basis of this, he revealed the systematic way in which votes were stolen on this seat. The ECI should consider this seat as a sample and get such surveys done on other seats so that the vote theft by the ruling party can be curbed,” he said.
He further demanded that the commission should conduct elections on ballot paper.
“If the ECI really wants to restore its impartial image by getting rid of the allegations of electoral fraud, then it should conduct elections using ballot paper instead of EVMs,” he added.
He said that no matter how many claims the commission keeps making that EVMs cannot be hacked, the truth is that EVMs are electronic devices, which like other devices, can be tampered with technically.