Mumbai, Nov 26 (IANS ) The Election Commission on Tuesday dismissed reports in a section of the press alleging a mismatch of votes polled and counted in the Maharashtra Assembly elections, terming it as "misleading", "inaccurate" and "bereft of facts".
The office of the state Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) has clarified that the mismatch of over 5 lakh votes as mischievously quoted in the report fails to account for postal votes in a seemingly deliberate attempt to mislead and sensationalise.
"False Claims of mismatch in votes polled and counted in Assembly Constituency (AC) -231 Ashti and AC-242 Osmanabad in the report are also misleading and irresponsible. The report reeks of lack of due diligence since the alleged vote difference is actually the valid postal votes counted. The story has chosen not to add postal ballots in the figure of polled votes on the voter turnout APP (VTA), which was verifiable from the ECI results website which clearly displays “EVM votes” and “counted valid postal votes” separately for each AC and thus sensationalised an imaginary mismatch," reads the clarification.
While stating the factual position, CEO Maharashtra clarified that the total votes polled in all 288 Assembly constituencies in EVM in Maharashtra state is 6,40,88,195, which has been mischievously shown as the total votes polled. The fact is that 5,38,225 valid postal ballots were not added to this figure. When we add the 5,38,225 valid postal ballots to the 6,40,88,195 votes polled in EVM; the total votes polled comes out to be 6,46,26,420. The total votes counted on the day of the counting including postal ballots is 6,45,92,508.
Earlier in the day, Shiv Sena (UBT) Spokesperson Kishore Tiwari claimed that as per the ECI, the final voter turnout was 66.05 per cent, or 6,40,88,195 total votes cast, but the votes counted were 6,45,92,508 – or a whopping 504,313 excess.
“From where did the extra votes come, why the difference in both the figures, where did these additional votes go, and how did this happen despite the so-called advanced technology deployed? The masses have doubts about the entire (state) election process,” Tiwari alleged.