Jaipur: Vote counting in 10 booths across Jaipur, Jodhpur and Kota municipal corporations and Suket municipality in Kota district was disrupted Monday after EVMs malfunctioned and the votes recorded on them could not be retrieved, forcing the State Election Commission to order a repoll.The repoll will be held from 7am to 6pm on Sept 16. Counting of the repolled votes will take place from 8am on Sept 17 at designated centres.State Election Commissioner Rajeshwar Singh blamed the malfunction on old EVMs sourced from the Election Commission of India, saying the affected machines were about 13 years old and in “worn-out condition”. He also said the state poll panel had proposed that Rajasthan govt buy new EVMs, but the request was declined.“The lifespan of an EVM is 15 years, and these units are already 13 years old. They were in a worn-out condition. If handled carefully, they might have functioned properly, but their condition often deteriorates during transportation,” Singh said.He added that all EVMs deployed in the Rajasthan ULB polls were old. “We had sent a proposal of Rs 50 crore to Rajasthan govt to buy new EVMs. If that had been approved, there would have been no need to obtain EVMs from the ECI. We have 10,000 EVMs with us at SEC, 40,000 came from Madhya Pradesh, and the rest were supplied by the ECI,” Singh said.Repolling was ordered after it found that the number of votes affected by faulty machines was higher than the victory margin between the nearest rival candidates.The malfunction also led SEC to postpone, till further orders, elections for chairperson and deputy chairperson in Jaipur, Jodhpur and Kota municipal corporations and Suket municipality, where results could not be fully declared.
