EVM contradicted early postal ballot trends in many seats: Varun Sardesai

MUMBAI: Varun Sardesai, the newly elected Shiv Sena (UBT) MLA from Vandre East, on Monday raised doubts about the difference between postal ballot trends and electronic voting machine (EVM) results in the state assembly polls. Early trends in votes are generally determined by postal ballots, which are counted first.
“In the Lok Sabha elections, the results were almost like the postal ballot trends,” said Sardesai during his press conference. “Then how could there be so much difference in the assembly elections?”
The MLA compared the data in 40 assembly constituencies, of which the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) won 20 and lost 20. “There was a big gap between the winning MVA candidates and the defeated Mahayuti candidates in the postal ballot,” he said. “But in the EVM, that margin reduced significantly.”
Sardesai said this was against the general pattern. “In the Lok Sabha elections, the postal ballot trend showed the MVA winning 30 to 31 seats and the Mahayuti 16 seats. The actual results were almost similar, as the MVA won 31 seats and the Mahayuti 17. In the assembly elections, the postal ballot trends showed the MVA winning 143 seats and the Mahayuti 140. But in the actual results, after the EVM votes, the three MVA parties won a mere 46 votes while the Mahayuti won over 230. How can this happen?”
The MLA highlighted data from several constituencies such as Worli where the MLA is Aaditya Thackeray, Guhagar of MLA Bhaskar Jadhav and Palus-Kadegaon of Congress MLA Vishwajeet Kadam. “In Worli, Aaditya Thackeray received 874 postal votes and 62,450 EVM votes while the Shiv Sena’s Milind Deora got 522 postal votes and 54,001 EVM votes,” he said. “There is a huge gap between postal ballot trends and EVM votes.” Sardesai added that a similar pattern was seen everywhere, including Nana Patole’s constituency Sakoli and Jayant Patil’s Islampur.
“We are not making allegations, but the data taken from the website of Election Commission has raised many doubts,” said Sardesai. “The EC should answer this.”