Omar tells Cong to stop blaming EVMs for losses

NEW DELHI: Opening another point of friction with an important ally, Jammu & Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah has dismissed the Congress party's vehement objection to Electronic Voting Machines, and echoed the BJP's defence - you can't accept election results when you win, and blame EVMs when you lose.

- Press Trust of India

"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 told PTI in an interview on Friday.

Told that he sounded suspiciously like a BJP spokesman, Abdullah reacted with "God forbid!" He then added: "No, it's just that... what's right is right."He said he speaks based on principles rather than with partisan loyalty and cited his support for infrastructure projects like the Central Vista as an example of his independent thinking.

"Contrary to what everybody else believes, I think that what's happening with this Central Vista project in Delhi is a damn good thing. I believe constructing a new Parliament building was an excellent idea. We needed a new Parliament building. The old one had out-lived its utility," he said.

He said parties should not contest elections if they do not trust the voting mechanism.