New Delhi: An investigation by The Quint, a news website, has found huge mismatch in EVM vote counts in more than 370 seats that went to polls in the just-concluded Lok Sabha polls. The website said it did not delve into phase 5,6 and 7 data of votes polled because the EC's website mentioned it as 'estimated' data.
The website also said that the Election Commission removed the data from its website eciresults.nic.in after the news portal contacted the national poll body seeking clarifications.
Constituencies where the mismatches were found included Tamil Nadu's Kancheepuram, Dharmapuri and Sriperumbudur and Mathura in Uttar Pradesh. These four seats recorded the highest number of mismatch in votes. BJP's Hema Malini won from the Mathura parliamentary seat.
Reacting to the report, former Election Commission OP Rawat said, "Prima facie, it appears to be a serious issue. I am not aware of any such occurrence (where votes polled didn't match with votes counted) in the past, that is, during my tenure as chief election commissioner."
Earlier, another news website, Newsclick, had claimed that it unearthed phantom votes in its investigation. In other words, the votes counted in EVMs were more than the number of voters cast in those constituencies.
The website had pointed out three high-profile constituencies in Bihar namely Patna Sahib, Jehanabad and Begusarai and two constituencies in Uttar Pradesh as part of its findings.
"In Jehanabad, the votes polled are in excess of the votes counted by 23,079. That is, it seems that this number of votes have not been accounted for. The margin of victory of the Janata Dal-United candidate in this seat was just 1,751 votes over the Rashtriya Janata Dal rival indicating that the result could have changed had the unaccounted votes been counted," the website reported.