On Sunday, 9 February at 7 pm, the state election commission released polling data for the Delhi assembly elections. This comes more than 24 hours after polling ended on Saturday, 8 February.
The turnout numbers of two constituencies saw a drastic change from the provisional figures released on polling day, reported Hindustan Times.
On the night of Saturday, 8 February, the Election Commission’s Voter Turnout app showed that Ballimaran constituency recorded 49.39% voter turnout, the third lowest voting count among Delhi’s 70 constituencies. On Sunday, 9 February, however, Delhi’s Chief Election Officer released an updated data in which Ballimaran had recorded 71.58%, the highest turnout of all 70 assembly constituencies.
Shakur Basti constituency witnessed a similar trend, the voter turnout was dramatically increased from 49.19% to 67.66%.
On Sunday, while addressing a press conference, national spokesperson of Aam Aadmi Party, Sanjay Singh commented on the delay in the announcement of the final voting turnout, the AAP spokesperson said that ‘a secret game is being played’ and ‘something is cooking’. But this charge has been denied by the Election Commission reported Hindustan Times.
Before the Election Commission released the final voter turnout data, state home minister Satyendra Jain alleged that there were discrepancies in the data of Shakur Basti constituency. The state home minister also tweeted the data.
In 2015 Delhi elections, the Aam Aadmi Party won both Ballimaran and Shakur Basti seats.
Meanwhile, Delhi CEO Ranbir Singh refuted the allegations claiming that there was no ‘unusual delay’.
“The difference in numbers is only because polling went on till late, and data from all polling stations could not be fed on the app and website. The scrutiny of records was done till Sunday evening, and the final numbers have come out now. It is important that the data is accurate, and we ensured the same.”Ranbir Singh, Delhi Chief Electoral Officer
Ranbir Singh also stated that the “data from polling stations is fed by returning officers into the website and the app. However, it is not accurate till the time figures from all stations arrive,”
Meanwhile, an official working with AAP’s Ballimaran candidate Imran Hussain told Hindustan Times that because of QR code scanner that was used in the constituency, the complete data may not have been uploaded on Saturday evening. He further stated that this might have been the major reason behind the difference in voting percentage between Saturday night and Sunday evening.
The QR code scanners were used for the first time by the Election Commission in 11 assembly constituencies.
Asha Ram, an independent candidate from Shakur Basti told Hindustan Times that there is something fishy about polling data and questioned ‘How did the polling figure go up by almost 20% ?’
He also stated that they will tally the final figure provided by the Election Commission with the voters who actually signed at the polling booths, as well as the number of voters recorded by each voting machine in every booth in Shakur Basti.
(With inputs from Hindustan Times)
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