"Whatever happened was procedural mistake" Kerala CEO on EVMs showing extra vote during mock poll

Thiruvananthapuram: Reacting to the opposition's claims of the BJP getting extra votes in mock polls in Kasaragod, Kerala Chief Electoral Officer, Sanjay Kaul said that the EVM is a tested machine and whatever happened was a procedural mistake.
The mock poll was held in Kasargod, Kerala on Wednesday.
"EVM is a tested machine. There have been numerous petitions to the Supreme Court questioning the credibility of EVM. There has been an elaborate judgement as far as the security, safety of the EVM Machine is concerned. It is a standalone machine; it is not connected to anywhere else. What happened in Kasaragod is basically a procedural mistake I would say, the Kerala CEO said.
Further, he mentioned that when we make these voting machines ready for the elections, there is something known as commissioning of machines where we put in candidates' names and we do a mock poll.
"What happened in Kasargod, the commission is being done by the Bharat Electronics limited, whose machines these are. They wanted to complete this process very fast. When they test the print test button, first candidates name came, they stop machine, thinking that it's all fine. The naming of the candidate on to voting machine is as per alphabetical. There was one particular political party, which is lotus symbol, that was the first candidate. When they connect it to the other table, what was there from the backlog, the previous table, that got printed first," Sanjay Kaul explained.
Mock poll is an exercise conducted by the commission that takes place in front of the candidates or agents assigned by them.
The Kerala CEO also pointed out that this was done just to create confusion before the polling instead of understanding what actually happened.
"The news was spread that you have press something, something else come out. Everyone has to be sure, voting machine are secure. Nothing is going to happen. Whichever button you will press, that is only going to be registered in the machines," he said.
Meanwhile, the Election Commission of India on Thursday denied before Supreme Court the news report, claiming that four electronic voting machines (EVMs) were recording one extra vote for BJP during a mock poll in Kerala's Kasaragod.
Response of ECI official came during the hearing of a batch of pleas seeking complete cross-verification of votes cast using EVMs with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT).