Yogesh
Jammu, Sep 18: The verification of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) for the Chenani Assembly Constituency in Udhampur district of Jammu and Kashmir was conducted on Thursday under tight security, officials said.
This initiative follows a request from Harsh Dev Singh, the state president of the Jammu Kashmir National Panthers Party (India), who unsuccessfully contested last year’s polls from this seat in Udhampur, they said.
Harsh Dev Singh lost the election with the difference of 15611 votes to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Balwant Singh Mankotia. Mankotia got 47990 votes in assembly polls and Harsh got 32379 votes.
The verification was held at the Government Degree College for Boys in Udhampur. This initiative was initiated following a directive from Udhampur District Election Officer (DEO) Saloni Rai on September 10. The process involves a thorough examination of EVMs used in the recent assembly elections to verify their functionality and rule out any potential irregularities.
Officials said that the process is being carried out under the supervision of election officials to ensure transparency and accuracy of results.
Seems fuming over the entire exercise, Harsh Dev Singh told media that three out of six EVMs shown up for the verification remained non functional, while the fourth machine had some timing error. He, however, welcomed the re- verification and said that this is his first step towards the larger fight against alleged electoral discrepancies.
Meanwhile, the winning candidate from BJP and sitting MLA Balwant Singh Mankotia expressed full faith in the Election Commission and maintained that there was not an error of a single vote. He said the number of votes counted earlier and number of votes counted today stamped the transparency and credibility of the election commission.
Moreover, Deputy DEO, Udhampur who supervised the entire exercise said that the EVM checking & verification (C&V) process concluded peacefully with no discrepancy, except timing error noted in any machine.
Chenani Assembly Constituency, one of the 90 constituencies in the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly, falls under the Udhampur Lok Sabha constituency.
