It has been a month since the elections to the Telugu Association of North America (TANA) were held, but the results have not been officially declared yet due to allegations of malpractices in the remote polling system introduced for the first time.
Though Naren Kodali group registered a resounding victory over Satish Vemuri panel, the latter raised doubts over the genuineness of the voting system, which it alleged, was replete with several irregularities.
The TANA board of directors headed by Dr Hanumaiah Badla referred the doubts raised by Vemuri panel to its Election Trust (ET), an independent entity responsible for the conducting of elections and Nominations and Elections Committee (NEC) for clarifications.
On February 15, the ET tried to clarify all the doubts, most of them technical, raised by the existing panel; yet, the outcome of the elections still hangs in balance.
Some of the doubts raised by the Vemuri panel pertained to data file and IP addresses of the members, undetectable VPN logins outside of North America and geo-fencing problems in electronic voting system.
The Vemuri panel also pointed out that several members could not cast their vote with the passcodes they received through post or email. The members who could not vote include past president of TANA Jay Thalluri, former board chairman Harish Koya, one of the contestant Sridhar Gottipati.
The panel also raised doubts on the number of OTPs (One Time Passwords) sent to each mobile number. According to norms only two OTPs are to be sent to a mobile number but there were instances where 16 OTPs have been sent to single mobile number.
The panel also questioned the voting rights given to the Telugu NRIs who had gone to India and voted from there.
The Vemuri panel is also contemplating moving the court challenging the election results.
