Congress lodges complaint over ‘unexplained slowdown’ in Haryana trends, ECI responds
Updated: Oct 8th, 2024
The Election Commission of India (ECI) today dismissed the allegations by Congress regarding slowdown in updating results of Haryana Assembly Elections 2024.
“Approximately 25 rounds across all constituencies are being updated every 5 minutes. Counting is being done as per statutory provisions,” said the ECI on X.
In an attached elaborate response, ECI said, “counting of votes is being carried out as per Rule 60 of Conduct of Election Rules at the designated counting centres and by the designated authorities following the Statutory and Regulatory regime.”
“Entire counting process in Haryana and J&K is unfolding in the presence of candidates, observers and micro-observers as per the Statutory scheme,” said the ECI statement.
Earlier, the Congress party today lodged a complaint with the ECI alleging deliberate delay in update of leads and results on the poll panel’s website for Haryana elections.
Submitting an ‘urgent memorandum’ before the poll panel, the Congress complained that during the first two hours between 9 to 11 am, there was an ‘unexplained slowdown in updation of results on the ECI website’.
“As you can imagine, this allows bad-faith actors to spin out 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," the party said in its complaint to the poll panel.
“We request you to issue immediate directions to your officials to update the website with true and accurate figures, so that false news and malicious narratives can be countered immediately.”
Sometime back, Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh took to X and raised questions over alleged discrepancies in the display of numbers at the EC portal.
“... we hope the Election Commission will answer our questions. The results of 10-11 rounds are out... but only four to five rounds are updated on the site,” Jairam posted.
He also flagged those “trying to build pressure by sharing outdated and misleading trends.”
Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera also vented similar concerns and asked: “Why this mismatch? Why aren’t channels, journalists, and reporters showing the counting from the centres as they usually do?”
He claimed that the EC website was showing slower updates compared to the actual vote counting.
Notably, in Lok Sabha elections 2024 as well, Congress had filed similar complaints before EC, where it claimed that votes for two states Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, together accounting for 120 seats, were counted ‘slowly’, at the orders of ‘political masters’.
(with inputs from syndicated feed)
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