Uttarakhand HC orders EVMs used in Assembly polls to be seized after tampering claims emerge

The Uttarakhand High Court directed the judicial magistrate of Vikasnagar in Dehradun district to seal and seize Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs)used for the constituency during the recently conducted Assembly elections. [caption id=“attachment_1751213” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters[/caption] The order comes in reaction to Congress candidate Nav Prabhat’s plea. According to a report in  News 18, Nav Prabhat had filed a petition in the high court about disturbances in the EVM. Nav Prabhat, a former Cabinet minister, had claimed that the EVMs used were tampered with. He was defeated in the elections by BJP spokesman Munna Singh Chauhan. The court also issued notices to the Election Commission of India, the state election commission, the chief secretary and BJP candidate Chauhan who won from the seat.   According to NDTV, the court has asked the respondents to send their replies within six weeks to notices that it served. It has also asked the election panels to not use the Vikasnagar EVMs  for any future election till it issues further orders. The EVMs have not been used since the Uttarkahand elections, since vote machines deployed for one election cannot be used again for at least two months. About 11,000 EVMs were used for the elections for Uttarakhand’s 70 assembly seats; 139 EVM sets were used in Vikasnagar, the NDTV report further mentioned. The Election Commission has maintained that EVMs cannot be tampered with. With inputs from PTI