MP: Digvijaya Singh moves HC over EVM after poll defeat; notice issued
Indore (PTI): The Madhya Pradesh High Court has issued notices to BJP leader Rodmal Nagar and the Election Commission (EC) seeking their responses on a petition challenging Nagar's election from the Rajgarh Lok Sabha seat.
The petition was filed by Congress' Digvijaya Singh, who lost to Nagar in his home constituency by a margin of 1.46 lakh votes. In his petition, the Rajya Sabha member has questioned the credibility of the system of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and urged the HC to declare the BJP leader's election void.
Justice Hirdesh of the Indore bench of the high court issued notices to the Election Commission and Nagar on Wednesday. The single bench then listed the matter for further hearing on September 17.
Singh’s petition said that following the directions of the Supreme Court on April 26, the EC had issued an administrative Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) on June 1 for testing and verification of “burnt memory and microcontroller of EVMs”.
According to the petition, the SOP stated that a technical SOP would be issued separately for necessary compliance, but it has not been done so far, raising doubts over the “suitability” of the testing and verification process of EVMs.
The petition alleged that the EC did not comply with the relevant directions of the Supreme Court and defaulted in implementing them, which “affected the election result of Rajgarh Lok Sabha constituency to a large extent”.
In his petition, Singh also questioned the maintenance of VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail) units and the process of inserting election symbols in their “flash memory”.
The petition claimed that no information is available about the “source” and “sanctity” of the applications or software used to insert election symbols in VVPAT units and the laptop or computer used for the purpose.
In his petition, Singh has urged the high court to declare Nagar’s election as the Lok Sabha MP of Rajgarh void. He has also sought information from the EC about the entire record of the elections held in this constituency as well as the hardware and software related to the EVM system.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
