New Delhi: The Election Commission dismissed the Congress party’s allegations regarding delays in uploading counting data to its website, calling the claims “irresponsible, unfounded, and based on malicious narratives.” The EC’s response comes after Congress General Secretary and communications head Jairam Ramesh, accused the poll panel of not providing timely updates on trends displayed on its website. For the unversed, the Congress party’s allegations emerged after the BJP made a massive leap ahead of Congress in the early trends of the Haryana Assembly election results.
‘ill-founded allegation of slowdown…’
“There is nothing on record to substantiate your ill-founded allegation of slowdown in updating of results. Your Memorandum also does not bring out any contrary facts as to the delay at any of the constituencies in Haryana or J&K,” the poll panel said in a note.
What Congress Had Claimed?
The Congress raised with the Election Commission the issue of an “unexplained slowdown” in updating of results of Haryana elections on the poll watchdog’s website and urged it to direct officials to update accurate figures so that “false news and malicious narratives” can be countered immediately.
In a letter to the Chief Election Commissioner and Election Commissioners, Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said that over the last two hours between 9 and 11 am there has been an “unexplained slowdown” in updating of results on the ECI’s website.
“As you can imagine this allows bad-faith actors to spin narratives that undermine the process. You can see examples of it already playing out on social media,” Ramesh said in his letter. “Our fear is also that such narratives can then be used by these mala fide actors to influence processes where counting is still underway i.e. in most of the counting centres,” he said.
“We request you to issue immediate directions to your officials to update the website with true and accurate figures so that false news and malicious narratives can be countered immediately,” Ramesh said.
Earlier, in a post on X, Ramesh said, “Like the Lok Sabha elections, in Haryana , we are again witnessing slowing down of uploading up-to-date trends on the ECI website. Is the BJP trying to build pressure on the administration by sharing outdated and misleading trends @ECISVEEP?” Ramesh asked.
The latest trends uploaded by the Election Commission showed that the BJP was ahead in 49 seats while the Congress in 35. The majority mark for the 90-member assembly is 46.
