Stop blaming EVMs when you lose, Omar Abdullah tells Congress

NEW DELHI: J&K CM Omar Abdullah’s dismissal of Congress’s allegations of tampering with EVMs and his assertions that he has never blamed the machines for election outcomes put his ally in the state and INDIA bloc on a sticky wicket.
Congress has been stepping up its attack on EVMs since its poll losses in Haryana and Maharashtra.
“When you get a hundred plus members of Parliament using the same EVMs, and you celebrate that as sort of a victory for your party, you can’t then a few months later turn around and say… we don’t like these EVMs because now the election results aren’t going the way we would like them to,” Abdullah said in a PTI interview.
Leadership has to be earned: Omar on Congress helming INDIA
When told he sounded suspiciously like a BJP spokesperson, he was quoted saying, “God forbid!” He then added, “No, it’s just that… what’s right is right.” “One day voters choose you, the next day they don’t,” Omar Abdullah said. He gave his own example of facing defeat in Lok Sabha polls while winning a majority in the Sept assembly polls. “I never blamed the machines,” he said.
He said parties should not contest elections if they do not trust the voting mechanism. “If you have problems with the EVMs, then you should be consistent in those problems,” he said while replying to a question about whether he thinks that the opposition in general, and Congress, in particular, is barking up the wrong tree by focusing on EVMs.
National Conference has been “exasperated with Congress” over the way it fought the J&K elections. Abdullah had said midway during the campaign that Congress is unnecessarily focusing on Kashmir when the elections are about how Congress will perform in Jammu.
Acknowledging growing discontent among INDIA bloc partners with Congress, Abdullah asked the latter to justify its leadership role in the alliance as it holds a significant position as the largest opposition party in the Parliament. In the interview, he emphasised that leadership has to be “earned and cannot be taken for granted”. The Congress leadership, however, refrained from reacting to the remarks.