LUCKNOW: From ensuring vigil camps at strong rooms where EVMs are kept in every district of Uttar Pradesh to issuing series of advisories on dos and don’ts for the party’s counting agents on how to monitor counting of votes, Samajwadi Party leadership on Wednesday remained focused on 'every possible mechanism which could help thwart any attempts to manipulate the election results.
SP president Akhilesh Yadav, who deputed senior leaders in each of the 75 districts on Tuesday night to set up camps and ensure round-the-clock vigil of strong rooms where EVMs are kept, put out an alert for party cadres to beware of a ‘conspiracy by the ruling BJP to manipulate the election results’.
With former UP CM personally monitoring the deployment of cadres, SP netas swung into actions around strong rooms where EVMs have been kept and checked every vehicle that entered or left the premises, including those belonging to the security forces.
Party cadres had not only set up camps but installed video cameras all around the strong room and set up mini control rooms keep a close watch on the premises through hand held CCTV cameras that party cadres are carrying with them while patrolling the strong room campuses across the state.
Meanhwile Akhilesh Yadav’s call to party workers to visit the counting centers on Wednesday and stay put till the counting is over, has sent the authorities into a huddle to prepare a security plan in case large crowds turn up at the counting centres.
"The BJP is trying to manipulate the election results as the Samajwadi Party-led alliance is all set to register a major victory in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections," said SP chief Akhilesh Yadav said on Wednesday, urging party workers to foil all conspiracies of the ruling party. He also urged the SP supporters to reach the counting centers as a ‘pilgrimage of democracy’ and stay put till the election results were finally declared. "Thwart every attempt of the ruling party to manipulate the election results," he said. The message saw scores of SP leaders and workers reach counting centres in large numbers.
The principal opposition party, which questioned the Election Commission for its silence on complaints regarding ballot boxes and other election items being found inside a garbage bin of the local municipality in Baheri area of Bareilly, recovery of postal ballot slips from a box inside the vehicle of additional district magistrate in Sonebhadra, on Wednesday welcomed EC’s action in some of these complaints. “Some of the officials have been removed and it only confirms that our allegations that ruling party was trying manipulate election results, were not unfounded,” said SP national spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary.
