Election Results 2024: NCP-SP State president Jayant Patil urges party workers to remain vigilant during vote counting

To ensure there was no repeat of manipulation in the counting of votes allegedly “like in Chandigarh”, Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar State president and MLA Jayant Patil in a letter asked his party workers to remain vigilant. “Even when many people have realised that the INDIA bloc will secure a majority in the country, the ruling party is misleading in this way because that can leave you confused and dampen your enthusiasm, so that you are not alert and active, and this opportunity can be had to manipulate the counting of votes by taking corrupt officials into their hands, like in Chandigarh,” Mr. Patil stated. The reference to Chandigarh concerns the mayoral polls held earlier this year in that city, where the presiding officer had declared eight votes invalid, which helped the Bharatiya Janata Party’s candidate Manoj Sonkar secure his win. He also asked party workers to not leave the counting centres at any point, and ensure they were a part of the team supervising the mandatory corroboration of five Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail votes, after counting was completed.