NEW DELHI / AGARTALA, May 22 (TIWN): Sitaram Yechury has hit Election Commission of India after demand of VVPAT slip-counting was rejected.

Yechury said, “This goes against the spirit of the Supreme Court Order on VVPATs made clear before the first phase of polling”.

“If the process has been so long drawn for the sake of integrity of the electoral process, why is EC not adhering to the basic principle of testing the sample first?”, said Yechury.

“Integrity of EVMs by matching with sample VVPATs has to be done at the start of the counting. Doing so after the trends are declared makes it infructuous and is likely to lead to protests and a possible law and order situation from the affected candidates”, he said.