Election Commission of India (ECI) has ordered re-poll at polling station (PS) no. 13 Kubza under 26 Aonglenden Assembly segment in Mokokchung district on Wednesday. Voting will commence from 7 a.m. and conclude at 3 p.m.
The re-poll was necessitated after a group of people barged into the polling station and damaged the ballot unit (BU) and controlling unit (CU) of electronic voting machine when the polling process was on May 28 for the Lok Sabha by-election.
Subsequently Mokokchung deputy commissioner (DC) and assistant returning officer (ARO) recommended re-poll at the polling station.
The commission has also ruled out re-poll at 10 other polling stations where presiding officers did not clear CU the votes cast. ECI said as voter verifiable paper audit trails (VVPAT) were available, votes can be counted on the basis of these.
Meanwhile, on complaints and demands for re-poll made by various political parties, additional chief electoral officer Moa Aier said respective DCs and ARO, along with observers, had checked each complaint during the scrutiny and did not find any discrepancies, and hence did not recommend re-poll.
Re-poll in 122 PSs in UP and Maharashtra
The Election Commission has also ordered re-poll in 122 polling stations across the two parliamentary constituencies of Kairana (UP) and Bhandara-Gondiya (Maharashtra), apart from transferring the Gondiya collector in the wake of the high rate of VVPAT malfunction there.
The Commission, based on recommendations of its observers for the said constituencies, decided to hold fresh polling in 73 polling booths of Kairana and 49 in Bhandara-Gondiya. The re-polls in Kairana and Bhandara-Gondiya were necessitated due to disruption of polling as many faulty VVPATs had to be replaced with ‘reserve’ machines.
A senior Commission official said the EC’s observers, who studied the reasons and impact of the malfunction of VVPATs, sought to blame a combination of factors for the fault.
“The fact that the VVPATs were new machines, inadequate training of the polling staff and factors like light and heat may have together contributed to the malfunction, they felt. The observers took stock of the impact of VVPAT replacements on the polling pattern and accordingly recommended re-poll in some polling booths. EC has accepted their recommendation,” said an EC functionary.
As many as 413 VVPATs (nearly 21% of the total machines deployed) had to be replaced in Bhandara-Gondiya after they developed a glitch, while the number of VVPATs replaced in Kairana was 355 (19%).
The EC on Tuesday afternoon also ordered the transfer of Gondiya collector and brought in his replacement ahead of the re-poll, which will be held between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. on Wednesday.
While EC chose not to give out the reason for shunting out the officer, sources attributed it to “dereliction of duty”. The Commission, incidentally, suspects that failure to ensure proper training of the polling staff may have led to poor handling of the VVPATs, causing them to malfunction.
As per the EC’s instructions, wide publicity may be given to the re-poll by the beat of drums in the polling areas concerned.