From allegations of aligning with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to internal fights among members, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has been heavily criticised by many during the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections. On May 24, Friday, the ECI posted a poll on its official Twitter account to ask social media users about the most remarkable feature of the Parliamentary elections. The ECI was trolled, and people even mentioned that they had “lost faith” in the constitutional body.
“What in your opinion is the most remarkable feature of this Lok Sabha Election?” the ECI asked. The four options in the poll were: 1) Electors, Officials, Infra, 2) VVPAT, 3) Voter participation and 4) Contesting candidates. Of the 8,223 votes polled, 36 per cent voted were for voter participation while six per cent (the minimum) votes were for contesting candidates.
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In response to the poll, many criticised the ECI, pointing fingers at their unfair bias in favour of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, in particular:
Your alliance with NDA was the most remarkable feature.
— Rohin Kumar (@rohinverma2410) May 25, 2019
Most remarkable feature was How EC murdered democracy and constitution by bedding with Modi & Shah.
— Dhiraj (@AAPlogical) May 25, 2019
You sharing an OpIndia article which in turn was sharing a Quora article?
— Rupa Subramanya (@rupasubramanya) May 24, 2019
https://twitter.com/GeorgieVerghis/status/1131947234285645824
Just door to door campaigning was left in favour of the BJP 🤪😬🤪
— No to Hate 🙏 (@IndnCommonMan) May 24, 2019
Bik gaya election commission..you helping bjp for this victory..
— Gaurav (@Grovs07) May 24, 2019
Coalition with BJP was most remarkable feature of this Lok Sabha Election.#LokSabhaEelctions2019
— Niyazi (@iam_niyazi) May 24, 2019
On May 22, Wednesday, the ECI had posted an OpIndia article which claimed that electronic voting machines or EVMs could not be hacked — the article allegedly was based on a post on Quora. Later, the commission deleted the tweet after social media users underlined that the right-leaning digital news portal had been known to post fake news. Even when the ECI posted the poll on Friday, several users reminded them that they should not have used the OpIndia piece as a reference. The commission posted the article after news of alleged EVM rigging and swapping surfaced from different parts of the country.