Yogi Adityanath, Uttar Pradesh’s chief minister, launched a scathing criticism against opposition leaders on Saturday, accusing them of attempting to shift responsibility for their electoral defeats onto Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).
Addressing the press, Adityanath declared, “The people who are rejecting EVMs today are the same people who used to loot ballots.”
He asserted that the Congress, the Samajwadi Party, and other parties within the INDIA bloc had a track record of resorting to deceitful methods to secure electoral victories.
“Whenever Congress, Samajwadi Party, or any other party associated with the INDI alliance is losing elections, they make every effort to blame the defeat on EVMs. This is not the first time, we have been hearing this continuously since 2014”.
CM Yogi also adopted a firm position against the opposition, urging them to clarify whether paper ballots or electronic voting was employed to secure their recent victories.
He alleged that the opposition was attempting to “deceive” the nation by raising doubts about the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).
“We want to ask these people that the Congress government formed in Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka last year, whether it was formed based on ballot paper? In 2009, the UPA government was formed at the Centre, was it made of ballot paper? In 2004, the UPA government was formed in the country, and in 2018, the Congress government was formed in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh, the AAP government was formed in Delhi, was it made of ballot paper?” CM Yogi stated.
“All these things make clear that Congress is trying to mislead the country and the people of their allies are also trying to mislead the country. They want to blame their defeat on EVMs, whatever names I took, all these governments were formed using EVMs. In a healthy democracy, every voter has the right to cast his vote,” he continued.
CM Yogi criticized the opposition, alleging that those who are now rejecting EVMs are the same individuals who manipulated votes in previous elections.
Meanwhile, on Friday, petitions requesting full verification of votes cast on electronic voting machines (EVMs) using paper slips generated by voter-verified paper audit trails (VVPATs) were dismissed by the Supreme Court.
In a significant decision, the Supreme Court rejected the petitioners’ plea to revert to paper ballot voting on April 26.
The two-judge panel, comprising Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Dipankar Datta, delivered a unanimous verdict.
