Ranchi, April 27 (Inditop) The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Jharkhand Monday demanded that paramilitary forces be deployed at all the strongrooms in the state where electronic voting machines (EVM) have been kept after two phases of polling.
“Why has the state police been deployed at strongrooms where the sealed EVMs are kept? We suspect the machines could be tampered with to help candidates of the Congress and JMM (Jharkhand Mukti Morcha),” state BJP president Raghubar Das told IANS.
“The Election Commission and the governor failed to conduct free and fair elections in the state and large-scale violence took place. Now the EVM machines are guarded by the state police and homeguards. Till last election, the machines were guarded by paramilitary forces. We demand that paramilitary forces be deployed at all the 14 strongrooms of the state where the sealed EVM machines are kept,” he said.
Polling for the 14 Lok Sabha seats from Jharkhand took place in the first two phases of elections April 16 and April 23.
The BJP leader added that his party workers would now guard the strong rooms as they had no faith in the present government.
“We have no faith in the present state machinery. Governor Syed Sibte Razi is working as a Congress agent in the state,” Das remarked.
Personnel of the Jharkhand Armed Police (JAP) and the Special Auxiliary Police (SAP) of the state police are currently deployed at the strongrooms.
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