Markadwadi Villagers Hold Mock Polls to Contest EVM Results in Maharashtra Assembly Elections

Markadwadi, a village in Solapur’s Malshiras assembly constituency, organized mock polls using ballot papers on Tuesday to question the accuracy of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) used in the recent Maharashtra assembly elections. This comes amidst growing discontent among villagers and supporters of NCP (SP) candidate Uttamrao Jankar, who was defeated by BJP's former MLA Ram Satpute with a margin of 13,147 votes.

According to the official results released by the Election Commission of India (ECI), Satpute secured 1,003 votes in Markadwadi, while Jankar received 843 votes—a result that Jankar's supporters have strongly contested. The villagers, who consider themselves loyal to Jankar, claim that the opposition has never received such high levels of support in the village in the past two decades.

In light of these discrepancies, the villagers organized the mock polling to highlight their concerns about the EVM results. “A massive police force has been deployed here,” one villager said. “We have doubts about the EVM results because, for the past 20 years, the opposition never got this many votes in our village. That’s why we organized this mock polling today,” he added.

Despite the villagers’ request to have government officials monitor the mock polling process, the Tehsildar’s office rejected their plea. “We asked for government officials to monitor the process, but they did not allow it,” said another villager. In response to rising tensions, a curfew was imposed under Section 163 of the Bhartiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023.

Malshiras returning officer Vijay Pangarkar defended the election process, asserting that “the voting process in all three booths in Markadwadi was transparent, and there was no discrepancy in the data.”