{"id":312488,"date":"2019-05-21T05:52:56","date_gmt":"2019-05-21T05:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/?p=312488"},"modified":"2019-05-21T05:52:56","modified_gmt":"2019-05-21T05:52:56","slug":"opposition-leaders-to-meet-ec-today-over-vvpats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/opposition-leaders-to-meet-ec-today-over-vvpats\/","title":{"rendered":"Opposition leaders to meet EC today over VVPATs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\" wp-image-301080 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/eci-tehelka-300x172.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"492\" height=\"282\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2018\/08\/eci-tehelka-300x172.jpg 300w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2018\/08\/eci-tehelka.jpg 596w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 492px) 100vw, 492px\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Leaders of Opposition parties, including the Congress, will meet Election Commission (EC) officials on Tuesday afternoon, pressing their demand of tallying voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) and electronic voting machine (EVM) during the counting of votes on Thursday.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">The parties took a call on the move after exit polls on Sunday predicted victory for the BJP and its allies.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">On Monday, Naidu met West Bengal\u00a0chief minister\u00a0Mamata Banerjee\u00a0in Kolkata and continued his efforts to cobble a non-BJP coalition post-poll.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">In recent past, Naidu had met various leaders including\u00a0Congress\u00a0President\u00a0Rahul Gandhi,\u00a0UPA\u00a0chairperson\u00a0Sonia Gandhi, Nationalist\u00a0Congress\u00a0Party chief\u00a0Sharad Pawar, among others.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">The delegation is likely to include Ahmed Patel and Abhishek Manu Singhvi of the Congress, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, Sharad Pawar of NCP, Satish Chandra Misra of the Bahujan Samaj Party, Yechury of\u00a0Communist Party of India\u00a0(Marxist), D Raja of\u00a0Communist Party of India\u00a0(CPI) and\u00a0Derek O&#8217;Brien\u00a0of the TMC are expected to meet the EC<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Another key opposition leader, Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy had said in a tweet<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cEntire Opposition political parties had expressed concern over credibility of EVMs under PM @narendramodi&#8217;s rule.\u00a0 Opposition parties even knocked the doors of the Supre Court asking for a traditional ballet paper elections to avoid defective EVMs that are vulnerable to fraud,\u201d Kumaraswamy tweeted.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Kumaraswamy further said, \u201cExit polls are being used to create an impression that there is still a Modi wave in the country.\u00a0 This artificially engineered\u00a0 or manufacutred Modi wave is being used by the BJP to lure regional parties well in advance to fill any shortfall after the results on May 23.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400; text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cThe entire exit poll exercise was an effort to create false impression of a wave in favour of one particular leader and the party. As they say, it is just an exit poll, not exact poll,\u201d he tweeted.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Leaders of Opposition parties, including the Congress, will meet Election Commission (EC) officials on Tuesday afternoon, pressing their demand of tallying voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) and electronic voting machine (EVM) during the counting of votes on Thursday. The parties took a call on the move after exit polls on Sunday predicted victory for the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":301080,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1801],"tags":[9989,11397],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312488"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312488"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":312489,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312488\/revisions\/312489"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/301080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}