N Chandrababu Naidu, the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and Telugu Desam Party president, is mulling to move the Supreme Court seeking direction to the Election Commission to tally slips from at least 25 per cent Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines with record of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in each assembly constituency in the state.
“I have been advocating the usage of ballot papers instead of EVMs, which can be tampered. But the Election Commission was not bothered. At least now, it should have a rethinking on conducting the polls with ballot papers,” the chief minister said.
There have been reports of malfunctioning of EVMs from almost all the districts in Andhra Pradesh due to technical snags. Polling did not commence till 9 am at several places in Anantapur, Guntur, Kadapa and Kurnool due to EVM troubles.
Naidu said he is planning to file a review petition in the top court, which recently directed the poll body to tally five VVPATs with the votes cast in the EVMs in each constituency. The Election Commission had originally announced to tally one VVPAT record with the EVM in each constituency.
Chief Electoral Officer Gopala Krishna Dwivedi himself could not cast his vote at Christianpeta Municipal High School in Tadepalli town in Guntur district due to malfunctioning of EVM. He pulled up the election officials in the polling station for not taking enough precautions.
According to Dwivedi, reports of only 362 of the 45,000-odd EVMs malfunctioning have come to its noitce.