Haryana Assembly election: Poll body ECI slams Congress for alleging delay in vote counting

The Election Commission of India (ECI) has hit back at the Congress party for alleging that there was a delay in the poll body publishing leads and results of the Haryana Assembly election on its website. 

The ECI in a strongly-worded statement said it “unequivocally rejects your [Congress’] attempt to surreptitiously give credence to irresponsible, unfounded and uncorroborated malafide narratives”.

The poll panel added that approximately “25 rounds across all constituencies” where being updated every five minutes which showed the speedy manner in which the voters were being counted. 

Congress in a complaint to ECI claimed that during the initial hours of counting, there was an “unexplained slowdown” in updating the results on the website. 

“As you can imagine this allows bad faith actors to spin out narratives that undermine the process. You can see examples of it already playing out on social media. Our fear is also that such narratives can then be used by these mala fide actors to influence processes where counting is still underway,” Congress said.