Amid renewed demands against the use of electronic voting machines (EVMs), Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora asserted that the Election Commission (EC) will not be "intimidated or bullied" into giving up the machines and going back to the era of ballot boxes. He also lamented that EVMs were being used as a "football" and some sections were doing a "motivated slugfest" over their use.

"However, I would like to make it very, very clear once more. In fact, it is not I, it is the entire ECI, it is the ECIs of the past, and it will be the ECIs of the future... we are not going back to the era of ballot papers," Arora said. "We are not going back to that era where we have ballot papers being lifted, musclemen being employed besides the delay in the counting and also too much harassment of polling staff," he added.