The BJP candidate from Gautam Budh Nagar, who lost to BSP’s Surendra Singh Nagar by 15,904 votes, has accused Nagar of rigging.

BJP’s Mahesh Kumar Sharma has alleged that the seals of the electronic voting machines were tampered with, and that the district officers colluded with Nagar by ensuring that his complaints were not registered.

“Polling stations in Dadri, Jewar and a few more areas showed 0 to 20 votes in favour of BJP, against 300 to 600 votes for BSP, which makes rigging during counting evident,” Sharma said.

Sharma has now complained to the District election officer. “We request you to procure video tapes of the counting and investigate the matter,” Sharma’s complaint says.

But Gautam Budh Nagar District Magistrate Deepak Aggarwal said the candidates did not raise objections in the time given.

“We had given the candidates ample time to file objections. They could have done that till midnight on counting day but they did not. Both BSP and BJP had sought written permission to put one of their party workers at the counting centre; no objection was raised,” he said.

“(Still) they can go to the High Court if they feel they have been wronged.”

But Sharma said there was no time. The results, he said, were declared around 9.30 pm on Saturday and he received a detailed copy of the results around 12 pm the next day.

“Next day was Sunday. When did I get the time to file objections?” he asked. “We received ‘0 votes’ in almost 10 per cent of the polling stations. It is practically impossible. Even the independent candidates got more than 10 or 20 votes at those polling stations.”

... contd.