As per a latest report, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) President Raj Thackeray will be visiting the West Bengal CM and TMC supremo, Mamata Banerjee in order to discuss and chalk out a joint campaign against the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). He is set to meet Mamata Banerjee on August 1. He had earlier met the UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, earlier this month and has highlighted the EVM issue. At that time, he had said that he strongly felt that the EVMs could be tampered with.
In the past, Raj Thackeray had demanded replacement of EVMs with ballot papers in the upcoming state elections. He also met Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora and other top officials of the Election Commission in order to highlight his demand. However, talking to the media after his meeting with the top brass of Election Commission, he said that he had zero hopes from them claiming that they seemed uninterested in such a serious matter. Raj Thackeray also claimed, “In the last Lok Sabha (2019) elections, in 370 constituencies there are discrepancies in the figures of votes cast and the votes counted, and the number of votes counted was higher than the votes cast.” Mamata Banerjee has also pushed for ballot papers instead of EVMs in the past. She has even went on to question BJP’s victory in 2019 Lok Sabha polls indicting the ruling party of manipulating EVMs.
It must be noted that other opposition leaders have also been making frivolous and baseless allegations against the EVMs. After the poll results were announced, BSP supremo Mayawati had claimed that the EVMs were manipulated and even went on to make the hilarious claim that the ruling party did not manipulate the EVMs in those constituencies where the grand coalition (SP-BSP alliance) won so that the electorate wouldn’t doubt the authenticity of EVMs.
It must be for the first time that the opposition parties have joined forces in order to cast a shadow of doubt upon the authenticity of public mandate. The desperation of the opposition has grown manifold after the Lok Sabha election results this year and now they are trying to find a possible issue in order to mount an assault on the Modi government. The intolerance narrative has failed yet again and now the opposition is again looking at the option of propagating about EVM hacking. However, the opposition has tried to build this narrative every now and then, failing every time they tried such tricks. It seems that the opposition is not going to gain anything out of this futile exercise.