Kolkata/IBNS: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee Wednesday flagged a discrepancy in voting figures issued by the Election Commission on Tuesday evening, four days after the Phase 2 pollings.
Banerjee claimed that in areas where the BJP is likely to get fewer votes than her Trinamool Congress, the voters turnout data has suddenly gone up.
Last night at 9:30 pm, I heard that there was 5.75 per cent vote in areas where BJP got less votes. In those places suddenly the vote has increased. The Election Commission has issued a notice, she said.
How did this figure go up? Suddenly figures are going up and around 19 lakh voting machines are missing for a long time, Banerjee said.
We will tell the Election Commission, remove the suspicion of the people. There is no point in becoming the BJP Commission. The people of India want to see you work as an independent Election Commission, she added.
The Commission, which releases the final polling figures late in the evening of the polling day, or the next morning, published a revised set of figures last evening. In it, the final figure for the first phase in Bengal was 81.91 percent, and for phase 2, 76.58 percent.
This is up from the figures on the day of polling — 77.6 percent for Phase 1 on April 19 and 71.8 percent for Phase 2 on April 26.
Bengal is voting in all seven phases with North Bengals Cooch Behar, Alipurduar, and Jalpaiguri went to polls in Phase 1 and Balurghat, Raiganj, and Darjeeling in Phase 2. Most of these seats are held by the BJP, which is trying to push up their numbers in the state from 18 to 25 of 42 constituencies.
The row over the fresh figures from the Commission comes a week after the Supreme Court gave a massive vote of confidence to Electronic Voting machines and rejected appeals for a return to ballot paper.
