Maharashtra election results: Here’s how Mumbra-Kalwa MLA Jitendra Awhad overcame 'EVM manipulation' challenge, offers a primer on social media

File pic

Amid claims of EVM (electronic voting machines) tampering, Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) candidate Jitendra Awhad has listed out details of how he prevented any manipulation in his constituency. Awhad, who won the Mumbra-Kalwa Assembly seat by defeating Najeeb Mulla of NCP by a margin of 96228 votes, took to social media platform X on Monday to explain the steps that he and his team took since the time the Election Commission (EC) announced the FLC (First-Level Checking) process for the EVMs in Thane district.

In the post, Awhad writes, "How I won this election with huge margin..."

According to Awhad, his team got to action as soon as the EC announced that the FLC process for EVMs in Thane district will begin on August 1.

"We received the first notice from the Election Commission that the FLC process of EVM machines will start on 1st August 2024 in Thane district. A team of mine consisting of my workers Mohsin Shaikh and Zinda Sandbhor along with 25 of their colleagues was ready for this from day one. As soon as this notice was received, my team took it very seriously and kept a close eye on the entire process from day one," he writes.

The Mumbra legislator then goes on to explaining EC's process with respect to EVMs.

"The EC carries out these processes with the EVMs: FLC (First-Level Checking), Randomization I, Randomization II, and Commissioning. Every process was monitored by my team. If there is laxity on the part of the Election Commission, they brought it to its notice. If there were any mistakes, they were rectified with my help. On some occasions, the officials concerned argued with my team, but we politely managed to convince them. There was a strategy behind this. It was to make them aware that people are keeping an eye on every details related to EVMs," the former Maharashtra Minister wrote.

He added that the team also kept an eye on the transportation of EVMs. "Even the transportation of EVMs was our focus. Every time the EVMs were to be moved from one place to another, the people of my team would go behind all those vehicles in their cars. If there is a problem, they would bring it to my attention," Awhad wrote, pointing to an incident where one of the vehicles transported an EVM without police protection.

"As we have gone through all the procedures of ECI, we had the details of which machine would go on which booth. We gave the details to our polling agent. As a result, no one here would dare to bring any other machines to our booth. Even while going for counting, we had given all the above information to my counting agent. He was trained for this. In short, we kept an eye on the small details regarding EVM. As a result, no rigging could happen in my constituency. And I got elected from my constituency with huge margin," Awhad further stated.