This post has been based on the tweets of @kanwal33
To the once respected but now suspected Chief Electioner Commissioner of India Sunil Arora,
India’s electorate as well as opposition political parties were apprehensive of foul play at your end. They’ve caught you red handed and found clear evidence that, in 373 constituencies, there is a mismatch between votes polled and votes counted by the EVMs. The problem with the Representation of the People Act, 1951, is that the thief – in this case you – is handed over the evidence against yourself, of fraud committed by you, for interpretation and destruction at will by you.
The 2019 General Elections’ results were declared on 23rd May, on the basis of total numbers of votes polled – which you are now calling provisional. Does this mean you have facilitated the installation of a Provisional Government in India?
Your website stated Final numbers, which do not agree with the votes polled. Rules stipulates that Election Officers will provide numbers of votes polled ‘every 2 hours’, with the final numbers provided when polls close on that particular day.
The Election Commission is authorized to add only the ‘postal ballots’ to these numbers on the day of counting. How then can you take down the numbers on the basis of which you declared the BJP and its allies winners, subsequently calling those very numbers provisional?
It seems Modi ji has a knack for picking officials who are grammatically challenged. You upload the so-called final number of votes and, when caught red-handed by proactive citizens, you take down those numbers, calling them ‘Ad hoc Numbers’! Similar grammatical mistakes were made by the Attorney General of India before the Supreme Court in the Rafale Scam case. He should have been in jail for committing perjury in that case but these are different times.
The Chief Election Commissioner of India was, simultaneously, negotiating with the Election Commission of Botswana, a country of a million voters. The lollipop given to the people of Botswana was that result will be declared faster, which could have been declared even otherwise in a few hours by manual counting.
The way the ruling party of Botswana passed the law to introduce EVMs and VVPATs in the middle of the night without taking the opposition into confidence at all, shows that the Botswana government is greatly influenced by #Modi. More so, when Botswana is a diamond rich country and Modi’s love for diamonds and for Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi is well known.
Alarmed by the #AntiEVM protests and #VoteFraud being exposed in almost all the by-elections in India, the opposition parties of Botswana took their government to their own Supreme Court, not to the Supreme Court of India. The outcomes of the orders passed by both Supreme Courts on the very similar apprehensions of electoral fraud, interestingly, had starkly opposite outcomes. The people of Botswana won and the people of India lost. The same issue, decided during the same period, ahead of elections (held in Botswana and India just 5 months apart), resulted in different outcomes by the Supreme Courts of two different countries. The Supreme Court of Botswana passed interim orders to the effect that the Election Commission of India should give a demonstration before the Supreme Court of Botswana with five different sets of EVMs and VVPATs. The Election Commission should further submit an affidavit stating that the Indian EVMs & VVPAT machines are hack-proof and tamper-proof.
The Election Commission of Botswana visited The Election Commission of India on 31st May, 2018, to take samples of 5 EVMs and VVPAT machines for demonstration before the Supreme Court of Botswana. The Chief Election Commission of India chickened out knowing fully well that thr ‘Don’t touch me but show you can still fuck me’ kind of ‘hackathon’ would not fly before the Supreme Court of Botswana as honest technical advice is available to the judges of the Supreme Courts of other countries.
Alarmed by the insistence of the Supreme Court to obtain guarantees that EVMs and VVPAT machines cannot be manipulated in any manner whatsoever, and the reluctance of the Chief Election Commissioner to offer such guarantees to the Supreme Court of Botswana as it gives to India’s own Supreme Court day in and day out, President Mokgweetsi Masisi of Botswana ‘reversed’ the decision to introduce the use of Electronic Voting Machine in (EVM) in the coming 2019 General Elections. It is without a shadow of doubt that it was the most sensible thing to do in the interest of Botswana’s democracy. This shows how public institutions continue to safeguard democracy in Botswana but have failed in India.
The Supreme Court of India believes that whosoever occupies such positions as that of the Chief Election Commissioner becomes a holy cow and never misleads the Supreme Court. This is totally wrong. The Chief Election Commissioner lied before the Supreme Court of India while stating that there has never been a case reported wherein EVMs and VVPATs have mismatched. The Election Commission, on the date of the above submission, had cases of mismatch from Maharashtra pending before it.
Another well documented case of perjury by the then Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the Rafale Scam is also pending before the Supreme Court. The mismatch of 373 EVMs is provocation strong enough for the Supreme Court to take suo moto notice of this mismatch and order not just 50% but 100% cross tallying of EVM votes and VVPATs. That counting the votes right is more important that declaring the results hurriedly is no rocket science.
A court monitored probe into the missing EVMs and proper inventorying of the EVMs in the Election Commission’s custody is of utmost importance. The mismatch between the votes polled and votes counted needs a thorough investigation. We must congratulate the President and the Supreme Court of Botswana for taking a well-meaning decision by rejecting the proposal to use EVMs and VVPATs, where India failed miserably on all accounts.
Postscript: The Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora deserves to be interrogated for his clear and evident malfeasance.