Chief Election Commissioner of India Sunil Arora on Thursday said that the election body is not going back to “the era of ballot papers” as there were calls for conducting 2019 Lok Sabha elections through ballot paper.
The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Samajwadi Party (SP) demanded that the Election Commission should go back to the old practice of conducting elections through ballot papers after claims made by a US-based cyber expert that the EVMs were tampered with in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
“I would like to make it very clear that we are not going back to the era of ballot papers,” said Sunil Arora while speaking at an event in New Delhi.
He stated that “We will continue to use EVMs and VVPATs. We are open to any criticism and feedback from any stakeholder including political parties. At the same time, we are not going to be intimidated, bullied or coerced into giving up these and start the era of ballot papers.”
Earlier, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has written to the Delhi Police requesting it to lodge an FIR and investigate properly the statement made by Syed Shuja at the event in London claiming to demonstrate EVMs used by ECI can be tampered with.