The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: The Congress on Friday (November 1) heavily criticised the Election Commission of India (ECI)’s letter to party president Mallikarjun Kharge in which the polls body had rejected complaints of irregularities in the counting of votes during the recently held Haryana assembly elections.
Congress said that it was not surprised that the poll body had given itself a “clean chit” and accused it of being “focused on diminishing complaints and the petitioner”. The party also said that the tone and tenor of the ECI’s response was unbefitting of a government agency.
In its letter to the ECI, the party said, “The answer given to the question of the machines fluctuating batteries seeks to confuse rather than clarify. At any rate, the ECI reply is nothing more than a standard and generic set of bullets on how the machines function rather than a specific clarification on specific complaints. In short, while our complaints were specific the ECI response is generic and focused on diminishing the complaints and the petitioners,” it said.
On October 29, the ECI had written to Kharge rejecting the party’s claims of irregularities in the counting of votes of the Haryana assembly elections.
It said that “such frivolous and unfounded doubts have the potential of creating turbulence when crucial steps like polling and counting are in live play, a time when both public and political parties’ anxiousness is peaking.”
“The communications carrying baseless allegations were often widely publicised by INC even before receipt of any formal letter to the ECI and mostly coinciding with peak of electoral cycle, i.e., near to or on poll day or counting day,” the ECI letter said.
The ECI said that the “persistence of this approach is disconcerting” and that the Congress has “once again raised the smoke of a generic doubt about the credibility of an entire electoral outcome exactly in similar manner as it has done in recent past”.
Following its defeat in the Haryana assembly elections, the Congress had sought clarity on the battery status of the control unit of EVMs (electronic voting machines) which was around 99% in some polling stations in the 26 constituencies.
The party had also alleged that it had raised the matter with returning officers (RO) in constituencies and claimed that there was slow counting of votes.
The ECI in its letter said that the battery status has no impact on vote counting. The functioning of EVMs was also highlighted by the Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar at a press conference while announcing the dates of the upcoming elections to Jharkhand and Maharashtra state assemblies.
The Congress in its letter on Friday said that while it is not surprising that the ECI has given itself a clean chit, the “tone and tenor”, “language used” and the “allegations” have compelled it to submit a counter response.
“The recent tone of the Commission’s communications to the INC is a matter that we refuse to take lightly anymore. Every reply from the ECI now seems to be laced with ad-hominem attacks on either individual leaders or the party itself,” it said.
It said that the ECI’s reply is in a “tone that is condescending”. “If the current ECI’s goal is to strip itself of the last vestiges of neutrality then it is doing a remarkable job at creating that impression,” the letter read.