The Congress on Tuesday afternoon filed a formal complaint with the Election Commission regarding a delay in publishing the leads and results of the Haryana poll. In a brief letter the opposition party said that between 9 and 11 am there was “an unexplained slowdown in updating of results”.

“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, i.e., in most of the counting centres,” the Congress told the Election Commission.

“We request you to issue immediate directions to your officials to update the website with true and accurate figures, so that false news and malicious narratives can be countered immediately.”

Minutes earlier the Congress’ Jairam Ramesh said, “… we hope the Election Commission will answer our questions. The results of 10-11 rounds are out… but only four to five rounds are updated on the site.” He also flagged those “trying to build pressure by sharing outdated and misleading trends…”

The Congress had raced into an early lead in Haryana as postal votes were counted, only for the BJP to stage a thrilling comeback late morning as ballots were opened. The ruling party then raced into a lead of its own, which it has held since; at noon the BJP held 48 seats – two over the majority mark.

READ | Infighting To Jat Focus: 5 Factors Behind Congress’ Haryana Fail

Early celebrations at the Congress’ Delhi HQ ground to a halt as the party – which is set to win the first Jammu and Kashmir election in a decade – contemplated a third straight defeat in Haryana.

The party’s senior leader in the state – Kumari Selja, who is also in the Congress’ chief ministerial race – told NDTV the Election Commission will “have to answer” the question posed.

“Why is the counting going slowly? It was fine during the Lok Sabha election… so why is the counting going slowly now? It is the responsibility of the EC to tell the world why counting has slowed,” she said.

Mr Ramesh, however, insisted the party remains confident.

“There is no need to be disheartened…” he told ANI, “Mind games are being played. There is no need to be disheartened. We are going to get the mandate. Congress will form the government.”

The BJP’s Sudhanshu Trivedi responded swiftly, declaring the complaining meant the Congress had “accepted defeat”. “If Congress has started pointing fingers at Election Commission then we should understand they have accepted defeat…” he told reporters, “Per current trends I feel we are moving to an important win and Congress has started taking precautionary measures for future defeat.”

#WATCH | BJP National spokesperson, Dr. Sudhanshu Trivedi says, ” If Jairam Ramesh has already started saying this and pointing fingers at Election Commission, then we should understand that they have accepted their defeat…as per the trends going on, I feel that we are moving… https://t.co/fonKAxCzNj pic.twitter.com/mJFuJhufWA

— ANI (@ANI) October 8, 2024

The Congress had made similar complaints in June, when votes were being counted for the general election. Then Mr Ramesh implied the poll panel may have received “orders” to slow down counting.

In that case he had flagged apparent delays in publishing results for seats in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which account for over 120 seats between them and in which the ruling BJP (and its ally, the Janata Dal United) was facing a tough challenge from the Congress-led INDIA bloc and its allies.

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