"How Did This Go Up": Mamata Banerjee Questions Revised Poll Figures

Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee raised alarm today over a discrepancy in voting figures issued by the Election Commission on Tuesday evening -- four days after the Phase 2 polls. In areas where the BJP is likely to get fewer votes than her Trinamool Congress, turnout data has suddenly gone up, she claimed.

"Last night at 9:30 pm, suddenly heard that there was 5.75 per cent vote in areas where BJP got less votes. In those places suddenly the vote has increased. The Election Commission has issued a notice," she said.  

"How did this figure go up? Suddenly figures are going up and around 19 lakh voting machines are missing for a long time," Ms Banerjee said.

"We will tell the Election Commission, remove the suspicion of the people. There is no point in becoming the BJP Commission. The people of India want to see you work as an independent Election Commission," she added.

The Commission, which sends the final polling figures late in the evening of the polling day, or the next morning, sent a revised set of figures last evening. In it, the final figure for Phase One in Bengal was 81.91 per cent and for Phase Two, 76.58 per cent.

This is up from the figures on the day of polling -- 77.6 per cent for Phase One on April 19 and 71.8 per cent for Phase two on April 26.

In Bengal's lengthy poll routine -- the state is voting in all seven phases -- North Bengal's Cooch Behar, Alipurduar, and Jalpaiguri went to polls in Phase 1 and Balurghat, Raiganj and Darjeeling in Phase 2. Most of these seats are held by the BJP, which is trying to push up their numbers in the state from 18 to 25 of 42 constituencies.

The row over the fresh figures from the Commission comes a week after the Supreme Court gave a massive vote of confidence to Electronic Voting machines and turned down a handful of appeals for a return to ballot paper.

EVMs have eliminated booth capturing by restricting the rate of vote casting to four votes per minute. They have also eliminated invalid votes, which were a major issue with paper ballots and had often sparked disputes during counting process, the court had said.