Union Minister Vijay Goel “prayed for wisdom for Opposition parties” blaming Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) at Rajghat here on Wednesday. He argued that the Opposition parties had come to power “once or multiple times” thanks to the same machines but were blaming them now as they are staring at “defeat” in the Lok Sabha elections.
The BJP South and North West Delhi probables, Ramesh Bidhuri and Hans Raj Hans were also part of the prayer meeting along with other senior office-bearers from the party’s State unit, including Delhi in-charge Shyam Jaju.
“It is a people’s protest to show how those who consider themselves the disciples of Gandhi are today mocking democracy by wrongly blaming the EVMs. We have come to pray at Gandhi’s memorial so that God may provide sanity to the Opposition parties and they do not mock democracy and let the country prosper,” Mr. Goel said.
“The Congress had been in power in the country for several decades, but it never found any fault with the EVMs then. Now when another party has come to power, the EVMs have suddenly become an eyesore. Why the EVMs were good when the Congress won the Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan, and in 2015 when AAP won the Delhi elections,” he questioned.
EVMs, he argued, were being used “as a pretext” to “hide imminent electoral defeat” and to “shun” public humiliation. Mr. Goel said, everyday some or other “technical issue” is being raked up so that the recently-concluded elections “lose credibility” in an attempt to “invalidate the votes of 90 crore people.”
“UP politicians were found to be saying that the EVMs which have not been deployed in the elections should also get the same security which the EVMs in use receive. They don’t know that even those machines are secured. They were talking of waging civil war on the issue of EVMs. Criticising and assaulting the constitutional institutions are their only goals,” Mr. Goel added.
