The plea, by NGOs Association for Democratic Reforms and Common Cause, sought a direction to the EC to upload scanned copies of Form 17-C, which records the number of votes polled in a booth.
The Supreme Court Friday sought the EC’s response to a petition asking the panel to upload booth-wise voter turnout numbers on its website soon after the conclusion of each phase of the Lok Sabha elections.
A three-judge bench presided by CJI D Y Chandrachud initially expressed reluctance to interfere in the matter but agreed to list the petition before a vacation bench on May 24 to hear the EC’s reply.
The plea, by NGOs Association for Democratic Reforms and Common Cause, sought a direction to the EC to upload scanned copies of Form 17-C, which records the number of votes polled in a booth.
Appearing for the EC, Senior Advocate Maninder Singh said the Justice Sanjiv Khanna-led Supreme Court bench had already dealt with the issues which are part of the present case, in its April 26 judgement.
In that judgement, the top court had rejected pleas for reviving paper ballots and for complete cross-verification of EVM votes with voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT).
Urging the court not to entertain the application, Singh said: “These are all efforts again on a falsehood… this effort is being made continuously to disturb the conduct of election process in the name of disclosure, not being made.”
“A detailed judgement (was given) after listening to the deputy chief election commissioner for two days in the court for understanding various systems and processes, including Form 17-C,” he submitted.
Advocate Prashant Bhushan, who appeared for the petitioners, said that the question of Form 17-C was not dealt with in the April 26 judgement
To a query from the CJI on what difficulty the EC has in uploading Form 17-C to its website, Advocate Amit Sharma, who also appeared for the poll body, said it was a time-consuming process. He said the poll panel has to get the form from every booth of the constituency and the Returning Officer has to go through the data so that there is no mismatch.
Sharma said the Form 17-C data is provided to every candidate and they can challenge it through election petitions if they have an objection.