Congress to parade defeated candidates before EC

​Hyderabad: The Congress, which suspects that many of its candidates lost election to Assembly on account of discrepancies in the counting of votes, has decided to take its agitation against the Election Commission to the next level by parading them before its office in Delhi soon.

The party leadership would finalise the date after it is through with the formation of governments in the three states it won the Assembly elections. The legal cell of the AICC would examine the issues being raised by the state Congress and then chalk out a strategy to step up the agitation.

The Congress is also preparing to file a petition in the High Court or Supreme Court on the mismatch that has been observed between the votes counted and votes polled in the elections to Telangana Assembly. It would demand counting of voter verifiable paper audit trails (VVPATs) to prove its point.

A committee has been appointed with PCC working presidents Kusuma Kumar, Ponnam Prabhakar, chief official spokesperson Dasoju Sravan and advocate Jandhyala Ravi Sankar to examine the issue thoroughly and prepare a water-tight argument to be presented before the court and the Election Commission. It is procuring information on the difference between the number of votes stated in the form given to the polling agent and in the data of the counted votes on the EVMs.

The Congress is pointing out that though it was mandatory to recount the votes if the margin between the winner and the loser is just one per cent, in most of the places, the counting officials did not follow this rule. Ibrahimpatnam candidate Malreddy Ranga Reddy, who contested with the support of the Congress, alleged that votes cast for him were not counted which led to his defeat. He has already lodged a complaint with the EC. Sources in the party said that according to the information received so far the margin between the defeated Congress candidates and winning TRS candidates was less than one per cent of the total votes polled in about 10 constituencies.

In the constituencies of Kodada, Ibrahimpatnam, Tungaturthi and Mancherial the margins are less than one per cent. If the excess votes polled in these constituencies are deleted then the Congress candidates might win. The Congress is also pointing out that in several constituencies the number of votes counted was more than the number shown by the returning officers after the polling has ended. In some constituencies, including Kodangal and Kaluwakurthy the difference is as much as 10,000 votes.

The leaders of the party said that in some constituencies voting was rigged after end of the polling and this has led to the defeat of many candidates and fresh counting has to be done in these constituencies. They said that all these issues would be taken to the notice of the Election Commission of India. Along with that a case would also be filed in the High Court or Supreme Court seeking 100 per cent counting of the paper trails of the VVPATs.