New Delhi: Delhi chief minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convener Arvind Kejriwal accepted full responsibility for his party’s electoral loss in Punjab, but once again questioned the reliability of electronic voting machines (EVMs).
The Congress party won the Punjab assembly election and ousted a decade-old coalition between the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). “Being the party chief, I take full responsibility (for the defeat),” Kejriwal said at a press conference, his first after the state poll results were declared on Saturday.
He added: “We suspect that 20-25% of AAP votes may have been transferred to SAD-BJP through EVM tampering.”
AAP, which contested assembly elections outside Delhi for the first time, managed to secure 20 seats out of 117 in Punjab and drew a blank in Goa. Kejriwal said that to restore faith in democracy, EVM tampering needed to be looked into. He has urged the use of paper ballots in upcoming municipal polls in Delhi.
PTI contributed to this story.
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