Early Counting Trends Not Legitimate? CEC Explains

In what has been a strange development, every single exit poll went horribly wrong in the recent Haryana elections. While all the major agencies projected an easy win for Congress, in the end, it was a fairly comfortable win for the BJP and the saffron party has formed the government again for the third time. This led to detrimental talk on EVM tampering and related stuff.

In tune with this, even AP’s Jagan Mohan Reddy sang with the same lyrics as he cited the Haryana elections as a testament to bringing back paper ballots. This narrative was carried by the YSR Congress outfit for a couple of days post that.

However, the Central Election Commissioner, Rajiv Kumar has addressed this burning issue today and he had a set of assertive statements. He faulted the early trends culture adopted by media houses as a reason behind the confusion on counting trends.

The CEC mentioned that every major media company that does exit polls is airing the early trends on their streaming platforms in a fabricated manner. “In order to justify their exit polls, these media houses are displaying early trends in tune with their projections. They are distorting facts at 8:10 AM itself. In reality, counting begins at 8:30 and early trends are out by 9:30 AM. All the reports aired by media prior to that are fabricated.” He noted.

Rajiv Kumar concluded that EVMs are a 100% safe and there is no scope for foul play here. The opposition might be looking to make a meal out of EVMs but we are ready to answer them how many ever times needed, he said.