AAP, along with hundreds of supporters, staged a protest on Thursday in front of the office of the Election Commission of India. The Party demanded the EC to use VVPAT- equipped Electronic Voting Machines in future elections. The area resounded with slogans of ‘vote chori band karo – stop stealing votes’ and ‘loktantra ki hatya band karo- stop killing the democracy’. Gopal Rai and Somnath Bharti and MLAs Alka Lamba, Son Dutt, Sanjeev Jha and Bhawna Gaur and other senior AAP leaders were present in the protest.
Gopal Rai, the AAP’s Delhi convenor said, “Our primary demand is that all EVMs henceforth should be equipped with VVPATs. The people of this country deserve free and fair elections.” The ministers also demanded the EC should announce that date of the hackathon at the all party meeting that has been called on Friday. Madhulika Kumar also alleged that she was getting calls from her relatives and close friends asking her where their votes went. She said, “I had at least got 100 votes and the results showed that I got one vote. Where did the rest of the votes go?”
Another AAP MLA, Somnath Bharti, who contested from Malviya Nagar said that AAP will first participate in the all party meeting on Friday and decided the next course of action. He said, “We will only be able to speak about the Election Commission’s stand once we attend the hackathon. No elections should be held without VVPAT machines. In 2013, the Supreme Court ordered that without the VVPATs, the elections cannot happen free and fair.”
this protest clicked online on social media platform. The #SaveDemocracy started trending across all platforms and AAPs protest gained widespread recognition.
