New Delhi, May 13
The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to take up on May 17 a plea seeking directions to the Election Commission (EC) to disclose final authenticated data of voter turnout in all polling stations, including the number of votes polled in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections within 48 hours of the polling.
A Bench of Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Dipankar Datta said the matter will be listed on Friday after advocate Prashant Bhushan mentioned it for urgent hearing on behalf of petitioner Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR).
On May 10, ADR had moved the top court for directions to the poll panel to disclose final authenticated data of voter turnout in all polling stations, including the number of votes polled in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections within 48 hours of the polling. Inordinate delay in the release of final voter turnout data, coupled with the unusually high revision of over 5 per cent in the poll panel’s press note of April 30, 2024 has raised concerns and public suspicion regarding the correctness of the said data, the ADR said in an interim application filed in its 2019 PIL that sought directions to EC to immediately upload after polling “scanned legible copies of Form 17C Part-I (Account of Votes Recorded)” of all polling stations.
The NGO said it wanted to ensure that the democratic process was not subverted by electoral irregularities.
“The voter turn-out data for the first two phases of the ongoing 2024 Lok Sabha elections published by ECI on April 30 has been published after 11 days of the first phase of polling held on April 19 and 4 days after second phase of polling held on April 26. The data as published by the ECI in its press release dated April 30, 2024 shows a sharp increase (by about 5-6%) as compared to the initial percentages announced by ECI as of 7 pm on the day of polling,” it submitted.
The non-release of absolute number of votes polled, coupled with the “unreasonable delay” in release of votes polled data, has led to apprehensions in the mind of the electorate about the sharp increase between initial data and data released on April 30, it said.
“These apprehensions must be addressed and put to rest. That in order to uphold the voter’s confidence it is necessary that the ECI be directed to disclose on its website scanned legible copies of Form 17C Part- I (Account of Votes Recorded) of all polling stations which contains the authenticated figures for votes polled, within 48hours of the close of polling,” it said.
“Direct the Election Commission to provide tabulated polling station-wise data in absolute figures of the number of votes polled as recorded in Form 17C Part- I after each phase of polling in the on-going 2024 Lok Sabha elections and also a tabulation of constituency-wise figures of voter turnout in absolute numbers in the on-going 2024 Lok Sabha elections,” it said.
