The election results in Haryana are unexpected and shocking and the Congress cannot accept them, the party said on Tuesday, hours after early leads in its favour turned into a comprehensive victory for the BJP.
Earlier in the day, the Congress had written a letter to the Election Commission, complaining of an “unexplained slowdown” in updating results for the Haryana election.
“As you can imagine, this allows bad-faith actors to spin narratives that undermine the process. You can see examples of it already playing out on social media. Our fear is also that such narratives can then be used by these mala fide actors to influence processes where counting is still underway i.e. in most of the counting centres,” senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh wrote.
The Election Commission dismissed the charges and said approximately 25 rounds across all constituencies were being updated every five minutes.
In its response, the poll body also said it “unequivocally rejects your (Mr Ramesh’s) attempt to surreptitiously give credence to irresponsible, unfounded and uncorroborated malafide narratives”.
Addressing a press conference around 5 pm, Mr Ramesh said, “The results in Haryana are totally unexpected, completely surprising and counter-intuitive. It goes against the reality. It goes against what the people in Haryana had made their mind up for, which was for change and transformation. Under these circumstances, it is not possible for us to accept the results that have been announced today. What we have seen today in Haryana is a victory for manipulation, a victory for subverting the will of the people and it is a defeat for transparent, democratic processes. The chapter on Haryana is not complete.”
“All afternoon, I have been in touch with the Election Commission. They have replied to my complaints, I have replied to their reply. We have received very serious complaints about the process of counting, the functioning of electronic voting machines (EVMs) in at least three districts in Haryana. There are more that are coming in. This information is being collected, we hope to present this to the Election Commission today or the day after,” he added.
‘Victory Snatched’
Answering questions on whether the party needed to introspect given that 16 sitting MLAs had lost in Haryana and the elections in Jammu and Kashmir were won only in an alliance with the National Conference, Mr Ramesh said the time for that will come, but added, “The most important thing now is that victory has been snatched for us. The system has been misused.”
