AGARTALA, May 5 (TIWN): Challenging the allegation of CPI-M , AAP brought against BJP Govt, as well as Election Commissioner for manipulating EVMs, an All-Party-meeting has been called by EC, which may cause massive faceloss for CPI-M as the EC is also planning to throw an open challenge to all stakeholders to try and hack its EVMs to remove all doubts about the voting machines. The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) led Left Front, lodged a protest with the Election Commission alleging that Deb, during a public meeting in western Tripura, had said that the results seen in Uttar Pradesh and Manipur assembly polls will recur in Tripura too and even if Chief Minister Manik Sarkar casts his vote for his CPI-M, it will be recorded in favour of the lotus. However, the Election Commission has convened an all-party meeting on May 12 following allegations of tampering of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). It’s worthy to mention here that Arvind Kejriwal was the first to stress about EVM with a Hindi national daily’s story on the episode. The story mentioned how when Singh was inspecting the voting demonstration, the EVM was found to be dispensing slips only of the BJP.

The Congress also sought an appointment with the CEC and demanded that the by-elections in Madhya Pradesh be conducted using ballot papers, later Mayabati led challenge against EVM and now in Tripura EVM has become the chief concern of CPI-M ahead of Assembly Election. Now Akhilesh to other political parties have joined in EVM battle.

Just after few months Tripura’s common people will cast their votes to their favourite candidates through EVMs and Tripura ruling party is busy to talk about the transparency of EVMs, revealing their fear regarding the election result of 2018, following a statement of BJP President Biplab Deb at Teliamura, where he allegedly said, “If Manik Sarkar cast vote in his name, it will come in BJP’s name”. However, CPI-M took the issue Centre following BJP President Biplab Deb’s particular comment about EVM.

Recently, stressing the issue Biplab Deb said, “After Elections, when CPI-M wins, the opposition parties raise question about EVMs transparency and the opposition parties blame that there were some problems in the EVMs. My point of view was this time the vote will be transparent & CPI-M’s demand of ballot paper voting is just calling back the corruption era of election”.

However, whereas CPI-M demanded ballot paper voting system and Sitaram Yechury demanded that the voter should receive a slip just like ATM after s/he casts votes.

The BJP leaders further mentioned that CPI-M as a part of their defeat’s excuse are preparing such backstages and these EVM ghotala issues are nothing but setting the stage ‘after’ defeat.

However, it can not be ignored that Biplab Deb’s comment gave CPI-M a golden opportunity to begin the blame game associating it with  the national issues. On the other hand the battle ground is turning much tough for CPI-M with BJP’s increasing popularity after a continuous rule of Communist here in Northeast state Tripura for 2 decades.

However, it’s to be seen whether anyone from CPI-M joins in the meeting or not to challenge the EVM manipulation.