The Supreme Court was hearing a plea by TMC MP Mahua Moitra and two NGOs seeking the publication of booth-wise voter turnout data and uploading of Form 17C data on the ECI website.

With the Election Commission stating that the new Chief Election Commissioner was ready to listen to concerns about the publication of voter turnout data and votes polled booth-wise, the Supreme Court Tuesday asked petitioners to pursue their grievances with the poll body.

The bench of CJI Sanjiv Khanna and Justices Sanjay Kumar and K V Viswanathan said, “Learned Counsel appearing for the ECI states that the petitioners may file a representation and also approach the ECI with their suggestions and the ECI will inform them about the hearing in order to resolve the issues raised in the representations. The representations can be made within a period of 10 days from today.”

The SC was hearing a plea by TMC MP Mahua Moitra and NGOs Association for Democratic Reforms and Common Cause seeking the publication of booth-wise voter turnout data and uploading of Form 17C data on the ECI website. Form 17C records the voter turnout in a polling station.

Senior advocate Maninder Singh, appearing for EC, told the bench: “The new Chief Election Commissioner has asked me to inform lordships that they can meet him and whatever is possible they are open and willing to do whatever.”

“So they are most welcome. Whatever issues are remaining here, they are wanting to meet them and sort it out if it’s possible, otherwise come back to court,” the bench said.

Appearing for the NGOs, advocate Prashant Bhushan said, “We are only seeking disclosure of that data as some huge discrepancies have been noticed”.

Singh said that on the day of polling, no phones, internet or email are available at any polling booth, so the figures collected in the evening are recorded in Form 17C and a copy is given to all political agents. “They are now saying put it on the website on the same night. Not possible,” Singh added.

Senior Advocate A M Singhvi, appearing for Moitra, said the counteraffidavit of EC says that giving Form 17C part I – booth-wise data, and part II – constituency-wise data “is neither feasible, nor desirable.” Singhvi submitted that though the EC supplies Form 17C to individual polling booth agents, they will have to be aggregated for a macro picture. “… we have noticed the (number of) persons counted during the booths today when polling ends and (number of) persons finally published tomorrow, there is a wide discrepancy,” he said.