SC shoots down NGO’s plea for real-time polling data

Officials with EVMs and other material leave for poll duty. File pic/PTI

The Supreme Court on Friday refused an NGO's plea to issue the Election Commission directions to upload polling station-wise voter turnout data on its website during the Lok Sabha polls, saying a "hands-off approach" needs to be adopted during the elections.

A vacation bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Satish Chandra Sharma said it cannot issue any such directions at the moment as five phases of polling have concluded and two remain and it would be difficult for the poll panel to mobilise manpower.

The top court adjourned the interlocutory application (IA) filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) to be listed before the regular bench after the elections and pointed out that prima facie it appears the prayers in the application are similar to the main petition pending since 2019 on the issue.

"This (IA) has to be taken with the pending writ petition because in between the elections, a hands-off approach has to be adopted," it said and pointed out that it would be difficult for the EC to mobilise manpower for uploading the voter turnout data on its website. "Granting any relief in IA will amount to granting relief in the main petition which is pending," the bench said.

Sibal demands SC intervention in EVM data preservation

Rajya Sabha MP Kapil Sibal urged the Supreme Court to direct the EC to keep the logs of EVMs safe for at least two to three years and declare the records of every phase of voting before counting so that no member is elected "illegally". Sibal also said if the EC cannot upload Form 17C - which gives the number of votes polled in a polling station - the state electoral officer could upload the data.

"Every machine has an operating system, so do the EVMs. This log of EVMs should be kept safely. This will tell us what time the voting ended and how many votes were invalid. It will tell us what time the votes were cast. So, this is the evidence that should be kept safely," he told a press conference.

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