MP: Digvijaya Singh moves HC over EVM after poll defeat; notice issued

The Madhya Pradesh High Court has issued notices to BJP leader Rodmal Nagar and the Election Commission (EC) seeking their responses on a petition challenging Nagar's election from the Rajgarh Lok Sabha seat.

The petition was filed by Congress' Digvijaya Singh, who lost to Nagar in his home constituency by a margin of 1.46 lakh votes. In his petition, the Rajya Sabha member questioned the credibility of the system of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and urged the HC to declare the BJP leader's election void.

Justice Hirdesh of the Indore bench of the high court issued notices to the Election Commission and Nagar on Wednesday. The single bench then listed the matter for further hearing on September 17.

Singh’s petition said that following the directions of the Supreme Court on April 26, the EC had issued an administrative Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) on June 1 for testing and verification of “burnt memory and microcontroller of EVMs”.

According to the petition, the SOP stated that a technical SOP would be issued separately for necessary compliance, but it has not been done so far, raising doubts over the “suitability” of the testing and verification process of EVMs.

The petition alleged that the EC did not comply with the relevant directions of the Supreme Court and defaulted in implementing them, which “affected the election result of Rajgarh Lok Sabha constituency to a large extent”.

In his petition, Singh also questioned the maintenance of VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail) units and the process of inserting election symbols in their “flash memory”.

The petition claimed that no information is available about the “source” and “sanctity” of the applications or software used to insert election symbols in VVPAT units and the laptop or computer used for the purpose.

In his petition, Singh has urged the high court to declare Nagar’s election as the Lok Sabha MP of Rajgarh void. He has also sought information from the EC about the entire record of the elections held in this constituency as well as the hardware and software related to the EVM system.