‘Junk EVMs, bring back ballot’: Cloud of mistrust hangs over polls in western UP

On April 1, the Supreme Court asked the Election Commission to respond to a petition calling for a complete count of the paper slips generated when votes are cast on electronic voting machines to allay “doubt among the general public as to whether there is a mismatch between the vote cast and the vote recorded”.

The news was buried in the inside pages of most metropolitan newspapers.

And yet by April 4, word had travelled to Suar, a speck of a town of about 30,000 people in Rampur district in western Uttar Pradesh, where Muslim voters told me they saw the court order as validation of their concerns that elections are being rigged in favour of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

“Now even the Supreme Court is saying this,” said Nasir Ali, who sells fruit from a handcart. “Earlier the media was speaking about this in hushed tones. Now, it is speaking openly.”

The next hearing in the matter is scheduled for the third week of April – the same week in which the first day of polling takes place in India’s seven-phase parliamentary elections.

Among the areas voting on April 19 are eight constituencies of western Uttar Pradesh. In six of them, Muslims constitute more than one-third of the...

Read more