A day before vote counting, opposition leaders’ vigil outside EVM rooms amid tampering row 

A paramilitary jawan standing guard outside an EVM strong room.

New Delhi: Amid complaints of alleged tampering of EVMs, opposition parties in several states are keeping a round-the-clock vigil on the storage rooms where the voting machines are kept in high security, ahead of the counting of votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha election.

The development comes after protests in Uttar Pradesh and videos of alleged movement and tampering of voting machines. Congress workers sat outside the EVM store rooms in Meerut and Rae Bareli, from where Sonia Gandhi is seeking re-election.

Meanwhile, senior Congress leader and party’s candidate in Madhya Pradesh’s Bhopal Digvijaya Singh along with his wife visited voting machine store room at the central jail in the city.

Mumbai Congress chief Milind Deora, on Tuesday, wrote to the election body chief in Maharashtra and said, “The vigilance around the storage rooms be increased and if possible, passwords of the CCTV cameras in the strong rooms be shared with the candidates so that they too can monitor the situation.”

Shashi Tharoor, Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram, who is seeking re-election from the same seat, is also expected to visit the EVM store room in his constituency, on Wednesday.

During a meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed dissatisfaction over the opposition raising their concerns on EVMs and said it’s a “needless controversy”.

The counting of votes will be held from 8am, on Thursday.

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