MVA Candidates Seeks Verification of EVM-VVPAT Units: Maha Vikas Aghadi candidates who lost in the recent Maharashtra Assembly elections have demanded verification of EVM-Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails (EVM-VVPAT) units in their constituencies. Several losing candidates of the opposition Shiv Sena (Shiv Sena) on Tuesday pointed fingers at the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) during a meeting with party chief Uddhav Thackeray. Uddhav Thackeray brainstormed on his party's poor performance in a meeting held at his residence in Mumbai.

Mahayuti got bumper success.

In last week's election results, the Mahayuti alliance of Shiv Sena, BJP, and NCP retained power with a massive majority, leaving the Maha Vikas Aghadi (marginalized. In the 288-member House, the Mahayuti won 230 seats and the MVA managed to win just 46 seats. The Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT) emerged as the single largest party in the opposition camp by winning 20 seats, followed by the Congress which won 16 seats, while the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) finished at the bottom with 10 seats.

Complaint of EVM tampering

Congress leader Arif Naseem Khan, who lost the election from Chandivali constituency in Mumbai, said he had discussed the matter with Uddhav Thackeray, who said he had received complaints from his party workers that EVMs could be tampered with. "We are getting complaints of doubts over the results from various parts of the state. Verification of complaints is necessary in a democracy and many of us, including me, are in the process of applying for verification," Khan said.

He said that as per the Supreme Court verdict of April 26 this year, burnt memory/microcontroller in 5 percent of EVMs - control unit, ballot unit , and VVPAT in each assembly constituency will be examined and verified by a team of engineers of the EVM manufacturers after the declaration of results. For this, a written request has to be made by the candidates who come second or third after the candidate with the highest number of votes. Such a request should be made within seven days of the declaration of the result. He said the appealing candidate will have to pay an expenditure of Rs 41,000 which will be refunded if the machine is found to be tampered with.

At the same time, a Shiv Sena (UBT) MLA from Mumbai has claimed that there were discrepancies between the votes cast in the EVM and the votes counted. The MLA said that almost all the candidates have raised doubts about EVMs.