Chennai, Aug 1 (PTI) GCC Commissioner and District Election Officer G S Sameeran on Saturday denied the opposition DMK’s allegations of irregularities in the EVM machines of Kolathur constituency in the city, where the then chief minister M K Stalin lost to TVK candidate in the last Assembly election.
Sameeraan’s statement came against the backdrop of DMK claiming that several irregularities were found during the EVM verification process carried out from July 29.
DMK president M K Stalin lost in this constituency by a margin of 8,795 votes to V S Babu of the TVK.
DMK legal wing secretary N R Elango, in a post on X on Saturday, said, “The checking and verification of EVMs was undertaken from 14 polling stations of Kolathur Constituency from July 29. This is not recounting but only verification of burnt memory/microcontroller of EVM”.
He further claimed that, during the exercise on July 30, a VVPAT machine was found not to be working. The very next day another VVPAT was also found not to be working.
On Saturday, “An EVM from polling station 157 was taken. To our shock, we found that address tags of VVPAT and Control Unit were not filled up. The address tag is found to be new. The wax seal is inappropriately affixed on the front side, causing serious doubt about the authenticity and proper custody of the machines,” he claimed.
“Finding that it is not possible to proceed with the process as 3 out of 8 machines are not working properly to ensure fair elections, we have walked out of the process. We have requested the ECI officers to seal the machines properly and informed them that we will be approaching the appropriate court for further remedies,” Elango said.
Responding to Elango, Sameeran clarified that all verification procedures, including the handling of EVMs, were carried out systematically in the presence of designated political party representatives and polling agents. PTI SNR SNR ADB
This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.