Mamata Banerjee on Monday vowed to build a nationwide movement against electronic voting machines, demanding a return to ballot papers and asserting that she did not accept the mandate of the EVMs as that of the people.

The movement will be launched in Bengal on July 21, which is the “Martyrs’ Day” of the Trinamul Congress to commemorate the killing of 13 people during Mamata’s movement against allowing voting in the absence of electoral photo identity cards under the Left Front rule.

“A movement to save democracy, through a return to ballot papers. We don’t want the fate of our democracy to stay trapped in machines. Return ballot papers, save democracy. It will be a nationwide movement starting from Bengal, I will ask everybody, the 23 parties in the Opposition, to join,” the Trinamul chief said at the end of a meeting with her party’s MLAs at Nabanna.

“Even the US rejected EVMs. There have been so many reports of mismatch. I doubt these results. Only two per cent machines are being matched, verified, how do we know that there is no programming in the remaining 98 per cent? The Election Commission should have seen this, but they did not,” she said, adding that the national Opposition had approached every possible forum seeking justice, which was denied.

Mamata has been dismissive of the Lok Sabha results across the country that handed the BJP a massive majority and 18 of the 42 seats in Bengal.

This was not the first time that Mamata alleged irregularities in the EVMs and other key aspects of the conduct of elections.

For the first time, however, she announced the wider agitation on the issue. “We don’t accept the EVM mandate as the people’s mandate. For this, whatever the vindictive BJP government wants to do against me, it can. My democratic right is to speak for democracy,” she said, pointing to countless reports of EVM malfunction during the voting and 22 lakh EVMs that allegedly went missing.

Mamata said the foremost topic of discussion at the meeting with the Trinamul lawmakers was “the conspiracies” allegedly hatched to help the BJP win.

“More than political discussions, we discussed the conspiracies that were hatched. What (Congress chief) Rahul Gandhi said on Saturday was what I have been saying for some time, that we had to contest the elections against all institutions. You will see that our boys and girls fought boldly despite all money power, muscle power, government power, all the institutional power, everything that was misused in the elections.”