The Supreme Court is set to hear a batch of petitions seeking a directive to the Election Commission of India (ECI) 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.
The petitioners have raised concerns over the delay in publishing voter turnout data for the first two phases of polling and have highlighted discrepancies between the initial turnout figures released by the ECI soon after polling and the final voter percentages published subsequently.
A vacation Bench comprising Justices Dipankar Datta and Satish Chandra Sharma will hear the matter. The alleged irregularities have prompted Opposition leaders and civil society members to demand the publication of Part I of Form 17C (Account of votes recorded) data on the poll body’s website. Under Rule 49S(2) of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, a presiding officer is mandated to furnish a copy of the entries made in Form 17C to the polling agents of the candidates at the close of polling.
On May 18, a Bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) D.Y. Chandrachud orally asked the ECI to explain its inability to immediately upload on its website authenticated, scanned, and legible accounts of votes recorded booth-wise after each phase of polling in the Lok Sabha elections. The CJI questioned, “Every Polling Officer submits [voting records] by the evening, after 6 or 7 p.m., by which time the polling is completed. The Returning Officer would then have the data of the entire constituency. Why don’t you upload it?”
Notably, in an affidavit filed before the apex court, the poll body maintained that there was no “legal mandate” to provide the voter turnout data to any person other than electoral candidates or their agents. It also claimed that the disclosure of data on the “Voter Turnout App” is a “voluntary” and “non-statutory” initiative intended for transparency and public facilitation. Casting aspersions on the motives of the NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), who had filed one of the petitions, the ECI stated that there was a “consistent mala fide campaign to raise doubts against the EC in every possible way by voicing misleading allegations.”
