The New Patriotic Party says its evidence of irregularity in the 2012 General elections has shot up from 1.3 million votes to over 1.7 million votes. This was disclosed by a leading member of the party, Gabby Asare Otchere Darko during a discussion programme on Peace FM, Thursday. The party is in the Supreme Court challenging the verdict of the Chairman of the Electoral Commission which declared President John Mahama winner of the polls. The party averred, over 1.3 million votes had been illegally counted and were praying the Supreme Court to strike out the illegal votes. During a press conference shortly after the petition was filed, the vice presidential candidate of the party in the 2012 elections, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia told the media they have unraveled over 1.3 million illegal votes which came about as a result of over voting, failure by presiding officers to sign, failure by voters to use the biometric verification machines before voting and other major electoral irregularities. He said the figure was expected to shoot up because the party was still auditing figures from the over 26,000 polling stations and will inform the public on the new findings. On Thursday, Gabby Otchere-Darko stated the figure had shot up from 1.3 to 1.7 million votes. "That is over 12 per cent" of the total votes, he noted. He said out of the 1.3 million illegal votes, over 900,000 of them went to President John Mahama. Gabby Asare Otchere Darko said given the enormity of the irregularity, the NPP flagbearer Nana Akufo-Addo and party leadership as well as supporters must be congratulated for taking a peaceful approach to resolving the matter. He said that was not exactly the case in some other countries, like Kenya, Ivory Coast, Thailand and Ukraine where the parties which suspected foul play in the their respective elections adopted violent means to address their grievances. But a member of the NDC Communications team, Akyena Brentuo who was also on the show dismissed assertions that the NPP and its leadership must be applauded for taking a peaceful approach. He insisted the NPP had no other option. According to him, the decision by the NPP to go to court was neither to distract the ruling government from fulfilling its campaign promises nor to ensure that Nana Akufo-Addo will entrench himself as leader of the NPP going into the 2016 election.