‘SWITCH TO PAPER BALLOT TO COUNTER EVM MALFUNCTION’
Pune Mirror | Updated: May 29, 2018, 02.30 AM IST
Sule’s call comes close on the heels of Monday’s bypoll at Bhandara-Gondiya where 25% machines were faulty Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) heir apparent Supriya Sule has demanded that the Election Commission should revert back to polls on ballot paper again to maintain credibility of election results. She was referring to the failure of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) during the voting in recent bypolls. She also reacted to BJP leader Vinod Tawde’s statement that she and NCP supremo Sharad Pawar had lied about the government’s decision to close zilla parishad schools. She said she had data to back her comments and alleged that the government was at fault for their policy that led to this decision of closing schools as many children would lose out on a chance at education.
Almost 25 per cent EVMs, used in the Bhandara-Gondiya Lok Sabha bypolls on Monday, had malfunctioned. A lot of confusion followed with announcements of polling getting cancelled at the booths with faulty machines doing the rounds. Later, however, election commission officials stated that polling will continue as the malfunctioning EVMs had been replaced. A controversy had erupted and politicians had questioned the credibility of the polls considering faults in so many EVMs.
Referring to the string of incidents, Sule demanded that the election commission should go back to ballot paper to bring credibility to elections.
She said, “There have been repeated complaints of problems in EVMs. If this keeps happening during major elections in the country, how can we expect people to get justice? The leaders in this government always speak of transparency. Is this what they mean by being transparent? Ballot papers have been used by many countries and they used to be the norm even in our country before EVMs. If there are so many complaints about EVMs, and the present government really wants elections to be held properly, they should switch to ballot paper. All parties have been demanding this for a long time.”
On schools being closed Following allegations made by state education minister Vinod Tawde blaming NCP chief Sharad Pawar and his daughter MP Supriya Sule of making false claims regarding the status of school education in the state, the latter on Monday slammed Tawde for his comments. Sule had earlier refuted Tawde’s claims that there had been an improvement in school education in the state and blamed him for the decision of shutting down 1,300 schools in the interiors of the state citing poor attendance.
Sule said, “While the state education department is claiming that they have merged 568 schools in the state, the actual number is only 430. In the process of shutting and merging the schools, which are not within 1 km from the village, many students are suffering. The Right to Education Act states that students should be given admission in schools that are not more than 1km from their homes. But government is only flouting the norms through their actions.”
She also asked Tawde if the government is going to provide any transport facilities to students who are being driven away from education through the process of merging schools and claimed that there are many students who are facing the problem due to schools getting beyond their reach. She also alleged that there were many schools in the district where locals had opposed the merger.
The NCP leader added, “Tawde claimed that he had personally spoken to students before taking the decision of shutting down schools. But in Pune district alone there are around 57 schools where the villages had opposed the decision of shutting down. This number might go up if we consider the whole state. They should take cognisance of this too.”
Tawde, however, took Sule up on her statements and retorted, “Supriya Sule and Ajit Pawar teach how to bring water to dams through corruption in their tuition classes in Baramati. We do not want to study in Pawar Public School. We are happy with our SSC board which teaches honesty.”
