Hyderabad, May 2: With just a fortnight left for counting of votes, the candidates of various parties and their followers are restless with “sounds” coming from the strong rooms where the Electronic Voting Machines are kept. Candidates were agitated when the sounds increased on Friday and rushed to polling officers to open the rooms to check the safety of the EVMs.
A large number of complaints over the safety of EVMs poured in from Chittoor, Anantapur, Prakasam districts. The candidates were apprehensive that the machines were being tampered with.
As the strong rooms are locked and sealed till the counting day, officials had a tough time pacifying the candidates. In Anantapur, the district collector along with police and elections officials were forced to open the strong room to dispel rumours.
“No tampering is possible with the present EVMs. They are foolproof. All these apprehensions don’t have any basis,” the Chief Electoral Officer, Mr I.V. Subba Rao said.
The technical wing of the EC said that as the machines were not switched off, there would be beep sounds periodically which indicated the battery level.
“We had asked all the polling staff to switch off the machine when it was kept in the strong-room. However, some of them might have forgotten to switch them off in a hurry,” said an EC official.
At several places, it was diagnosed that discharge of the battery caused the strange sounds.
“Anybody would get doubt after hearing different sounds from the strong-rooms. It is responsibility of the EC to clear the doubts of candidates,” said P. Venugopal Reddy, district president of Congress in Anantapur.
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