JKNPP alleges polls were rigged; asks for re-election

JAMMU, Dec 28:
Alleging a “large-scale” rigging in the recently-concluded Assembly polls, the Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party today asked for a re-election based on “paper ballots”.
“There is not an iota of doubt that the assembly polls were rigged and manipulated by programming the electronic voting machines,” JKNPP Chief Bhim Singh said during the meeting of the party leaders here.
Incidentally, Singh’s party, JKNPP drew a blank in the Jammu and Kashmir polls.
He claimed that several countries across the globe have discarded the system of using electronic voting machines (EVMs).
“EVMs have been discarded by many democratic countries in the world as not reliable. The countries like Germany, the Netherlands and many states in the US have discarded the system as a potential danger of vote fraud and more importantly, lack of transparency and verifiability,” Singh claimed.
He said that the Supreme Court in its judgement on October 8 last year had started that “paper trail” was an indispensable requirement of free and fair elections.
Singh alleged that “large-scale rigging” took place in the recently-concluded Assembly elections to “benefit the BJP candidates”.
He said that re-elections in the State should take place using the paper ballots. (AGENCIES)