KOLKATA — West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday raised questions over voting machines used in the Lok Sabha elections and urged opposition parties to unitedly demand the return of ballot papers for polls.
Banerjee said a fact-finding committee should be constituted to find out the details about EVMs.
“We have to save the democracy. We don’t want machines, we demand a return to the ballot paper system. We will start a movement and it will be initiated from Bengal,” she told reporters after a meeting with party MLAs and state ministers to review TMC’s drubbing in the elections.
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“I will ask all the 23 political parties in the opposition to come together and demand the return of ballot papers. Even a country like the US has banned EVMs,” she said.
The Trinamool Congress supremo alleged that BJP has used money, “muscle”, institutions, media and the government to win the elections.
The BJP managed to win 18 out of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state because of the Left Front, she said.
“The BJP managed only 18 seats not 23 as they were claiming... And that also because of the Left Front parties. But we (TMC) have managed to increase four percent of our vote share,” she added.