Mumbai resident claimed over 75 lakh votes were polled after 6 pm, and discrepancies were found in over 90 constituencies in Maharashtra.

The Bombay High Court on Wednesday dismissed a plea raising concerns over alleged discrepancies in the voting process on November 20, 2024, the polling day for the Maharashtra Assembly elections, including “unusually high percentage of votes” cast during the final minutes and after the closing hour of 6 pm. The court held that the petitioner had made “farcical claims” out of “desperation” without supporting material and the plea filed with “casual approach” deserved to be dismissed.

The bench further noted that ECI has provided several precautions to be taken to strictly adhere to fair procedure of elections and there was ” nothing on record that at any polling station in the State of Maharashtra, any untoward incident/fraud had taken place.”

“We, hence, fail to discern as to how, in the absence of any tangible material acceptable in law, which also needs to be booth wise, that there was any fraudulent voting or there was no voting..Thus, the said reply to the RTI application would not support the petitioner’s contention of elections to all the constituencies in the State of Maharashtra can at all be illegal. In fact on the face of it, such case of the petitioner appears to be quite absurd to say the least,” the HC said in its order.

Election Commission sources said all the doubts raised by Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi and Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge had been settled by the High Court.

The bench of Justices Girish S Kulkarni and Arif S Doctor passed the order on a writ plea by city resident Chetan Chandrakant Ahire who claimed that over 75 lakh votes were polled after the official voting time of 6 pm, and several discrepancies were found in over 90 constituencies where the number of votes counted did not match with those polled, and there was no transparency in the process.

Among other prayers, the petitioner through advocate Prakash Ambedkar sought directions from the court to the Election Commission of India (ECI) to disclose the exact number of tokens distributed to voters after 6 pm at each polling station, and the total tokens distributed across all constituency segments. He also sought immediate withdrawal of the election certificates issued by respective Returning Officers (ROs). The petitioner said it was an “issue of faith of the common man in the election process.”

The bench on June 23, before concluding the arguments, had queried whether the practice of coupons or tokens being given to those who voted beyond 6 pm was followed during the Lok Sabha elections and asked what was the difference during Assembly elections. It remarked that the petitioner had failed to show a statement in the plea that there was a “departure from earlier practice.”

Senior advocate Ashutosh Kumbhakoni, representing the ECI and advocate Uday Warunjikar representing the Central government, however, raised preliminary objection on the maintainability of the plea. The ECI submitted that the elections were conducted as per due procedures across over 1 lakh polling booths in 288 constituencies in Maharashtra.

In its June 25 judgement, the HC noted that the petitioner was neither the candidate nor did he make any representation to ECI related to alleged discrepancies and instead raised contentions in his “extremely weak” plea seeking “sweeping and drastic reliefs,” merely on the basis of information from news reports or RTI application.

Justice Kulkarni for the bench referred to recent Supreme Court judgement in Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) case and added, “We are also of the opinion that although such farcical claims are made on the purity of the process of the elections of the State Assembly, and more particularly in the context of the electronic voting machines (EVM) and a need to discard such system of voting to be replaced by a traditional method of voting by ballot papers, such plea of the petitioner, appears to be in absolute desperation.”

“We have no manner of doubt that the petition is required to be summarily rejected. It is accordingly rejected. The hearing of this petition practically has taken the whole day, leaving aside our urgent cause list and for such a reason it would certainly warrant dismissal with costs. However, we refrain from doing so,” the high court held.