EC all-party meet on EVMs begins

New Delhi May 12 (IANS) An all party meeting with the Election Commission on the issue of alleged EVM tampering began here on Friday.

Representatives of seven national parties and 48 state parties were invited by the poll panel for the meeting at the Constitution Club to reassure the parties that Electronic Voting Machines cannot be tampered with and were secured.

A host of opposition parties chiefly the Arvind Kejirwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) have alleged that EVMs were tampered with in the February-March five state assembly elections and the just concluded Delhi civic bodies polls.

Earlier AAP legislator Saurabh Bharadwaj during a special session of the Delhi Assembly had sought to demonstrate the procedure for tampering an EVM.

The poll panel dismissed his assertion outright saying the machine used by Bharadwaj was a lookalike of an ECEVM and therefore could be used to demonstrate any magic or tampering.

--IANS
and/in