The Supreme Court on Friday sought a response from the Election Commission of India (ECI) within a week on a plea by an NGO seeking a direction to upload polling station-wise voter turnout data on its website within 48 hours of the conclusion of polling for each phase of the Lok Sabha elections, reports Bar and Bench.
A bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra assembled at 6 30 PM to hear the plea of NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) on the issue.
The bench asked the ECI counsel, Amit Sharma, what was the difficulty in putting up voter turnout details on its website.
“It takes time. We have to collect a lot of data,” the ECI counsel said.
The CJI directed that the poll panel be granted a reasonable amount of time to respond to the plea. The case has been scheduled for a hearing before an appropriate bench during the summer vacation on May 24, just a day before the sixth phase of the seven-phase Lok Sabha polls.
Earlier today, advocate Prashant Bhushan, representing the NGO, raised the matter and requested an urgent listing of the petition.
Last week, the NGO submitted an interim application as part of its 2019 Public Interest Litigation (PIL). The application seeks directions to the poll panel for the immediate uploading of “scanned legible copies of Form 17C Part-I (Account of Votes Recorded)” from all polling stations following the polls.
The application was submitted in response to the recent uproar surrounding the notable surge in the final voter turnout figures announced by the poll body for the initial two phases of the ongoing Lok Sabha elections, in contrast to the initial estimates disclosed on the respective polling days.
According to the application, data released on April 30 unveiled a significant rise (approximately 5-6%) in the final voter turnout figures compared to the preliminary percentages declared by the ECI on the day of polling. This discrepancy, compounded by the delay in the announcement of the voter turnout, has sparked concerns among voters and political factions regarding the accuracy of the data.
The application, spearheaded by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), is part of a broader plea to reconcile Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips with votes cast via Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) so that voters can verify that their vite has been ‘counted as recorded’ and ‘recorded as cast’.
The main plea was rejected by the top court on April 26.