Bhubaneswar: BJP leader Dilip Kumar Ray on Friday moves to the High Court demanding the cancellation of Rourkela BJD MLA Sarada Prasad Nayak’s candidacy. He alleges that Nayak provided false information regarding his criminal cases and assets in the affidavit submitted with his nomination for the Assembly polls.
Ray has levelled several other accusations against Nayak, prompting BJP state spokespeople to approach the Election Commission.
Notably, Sarada Nayak of the BJD won the election against Ray in the recently concluded Assembly elections for the Rourkela constituency. Today Ray pleaded with the court to declare the election result void.
EC to re-verify votes on Dipali’s plea
In another instance, the Election Commission has agreed to re-verify the votes of EVMs and VVPATs at 13 booths in Jharsuguda following a request from BJD candidate Dipali Das. She had previously submitted an application for re-verification to the District Collector and the District Election Officer.
BJD’s Dipali lost the Jharsuguda constituency by a margin of 1,333 votes to BJP’s Tankadhar Tripathy in the recent elections. However, fearing that there was a wrong counting of votes or EVM malfunctioning, she applied for the re-verification depositing the required fees.
According to the rules, candidates can request the re-verification of 5 percent of the EVMs if they have any doubts about the count. The deadline for such applications was June 10. Based on this rule, Dipali applied to verify 5 percent, or 13 sets, of EVMs and VVPATs, which the Chief Election Commissioner approved. An engineering team will oversee the inspection of these 13 sets.
Out of 92 booths where re-verification was requested, Deepali Das is the sole candidate from Odisha to apply.
