‘Phantom Votes’: 119 of 120 LS Seats in UP, Bihar Under Cloud? – By Chandan Nandy, Kashif Kakvi
Across a bulk of the 120 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, thousands of votes in excess of the Election Commission of India (ECI)-recorded figures were found to have been cast. This raises serious doubts about the poll panel’s failure to follow a fool-proof accounting procedure, a deeper and more comprehensive investigation by NewsClick has revealed. NewsClick had earlier reported the issue of mismatch and excess votes in a few seats in UP and Bihar, as given in the ECI website.
Relying entirely on official data and other poll-related figures put out by the ECI, the two state poll panel websites and the ECI’s Voter Turnout app, it has been found that several thousands of votes in addition to the total ballots (including postal ballots) counted could be traced to as many as 34 of the 40 parliamentary seats in Bihar, the most glaring being Patna Sahib where the BJP’s Ravi Shankar Prasad defeated Congress’ Shatrughan Sinha.
NewsClick depended on the ECI data for total votes counted and on the two states’ poll panel’s website for the total number of registered voters in each of the 120 constituencies. The polling percentage was taken from the Voter Turnout App and state websites. Postal ballots were not included in the analysis as they do not constitute the polling percentage and are taken into account only during the counting process. The analysis was carried out for each of the 120 seats across the two Hindi heartland states, among other regions, that propelled the BJP to a final tally of 303 seats in the Parliament.…
https://www.newsclick.in/Phantom-Votes-Elections-2019-ECI-Bihar-UP
SEE ALSO:
- EVM Vote Count Mismatch In 370+ Seats and EC Refuses to Explain – By Poonam Agarwal (May 31, 2019, The Quint)
https://www.thequint.com/news/india/lok-sabha-election-results-2019-mismatch-in-votes-polled-and-counted-in-evm-on-multiple-seats - Thousands of Phantom Votes Suspected Across Lok Sabha Seats in Bihar, UP – By Chandan Nandy, Kashif Kakvi (May 28, 2019, News Click)
https://www.newsclick.in/Elections-commission-India-Votes-Discrepancies-2019
