Not quitting politics yet: Jayantakumar
Source: Chronicle News Service

Imphal, March 15 2022: Former minister L Jayantakumar of Keishamthong assembly constituency, who lost in the recently concluded 12th Manipur Legislative Assembly election, said that he is not retiring from active politics but will be taking a break so as to examine how the new MLA performs.

Addressing a press meet here on Tuesday, Jayantakumar said that after a couple of days of the declaration of election results, he shared his views on social media.

Unfortunately, some people misunderstood what he said about taking a break from politics as a decision to quit politics and circulated the information on social media.

The false report hurt the sentiments of many of his supporters and they asked him why he took the decision without consulting with them.

Some rival political parties also proposed to him to join them, he said.

What he actually said was to allow the newly elected MLA of the constituency to serve the public and he would take a break.

He also said that he would continue to serve the people of the constituency.

Regarding the outcome of the recent election, Jayantakumar said that he is still not convinced with the results but he cannot say anything since he does not have any evidence to claim of EVM fraud.

He had full confidence of winning the election and people from other constituencies also had the same expectation.

However, the result came in stark contrast to what he had calculated.

It is not only for him but also for many others.

Besides, candidates spent huge amount for distribution to voters and many voters shifted their support as most of the families are facing financial issues.

Everybody knows how much money were distributed to the voters by different candidates.

Moreover, the ruling party used money and muscle power to win the election, which resulted in poll related violence, he claimed.

EVM is an electronic machine made by human and there is no reason to claim that the machine is hack-proof.

Since he is not a technical expert, he cannot bring out any solid evidence to show EVM fraud.

Yet, he finds it hard to accept the number of votes he got as every candidate knows an estimated number of votes he would get and getting an outcome opposite to those estimates raises suspicions.

US and Japan, which first invented the EVM had stopped using the machine and re-adopted the conventional method of paper ballot voting.

During the recent election, there was an incident of police personnel of a particular state arrested by people along with EVMs and the reason why those unauthorised police personnel were transporting the EVMs is obviously for manipulation, he said.

Comment