Guwahati, Jan 12 (PTI) The Assam unit of the Congress on Friday questioned the Election Commission of India (ECI) “withholding” the names of polling booths and political parties of contesting candidates on its official website since the 2021 assembly polls in the northeastern state.
It also questioned “who benefits by withholding the information”, while urging the ECI to immediately revert to the earlier practice of showcasing names of polling booths and political parties.
Assam Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) vice-president Bobbeeta Sharma, in an emailed letter to the ECI, claimed that certain information was missing from Form 20 since the assembly elections of 2021.
It does not contain “names” of the polling booths with only the polling booth number mentioned, and the “names of political parties” of contesting candidates are also missing, she maintained in the letter, a copy of which was handed to the additional chief electoral officer (CEO) here and shared with the media.
Sharma said Form 20 contained the information until 2021 and added, “… in the present status, ECI does not reveal the name of the polling booths while publishing results nor the name of the political party to which each candidate belongs. Instead, it only assigns a number. Numbers do not remain constant but keep changing in every election.” She questioned why the ECI was “trying to withhold information from the public” and what has “compelled” it to do so.
The APCC senior spokesperson also questioned “who benefits by withholding the names of polling booths”.
Urging the ECI to revert to the earlier practice, she added, “We strongly believe that any election-related data of previous years and future should be made available in a transparent manner on the official website of ECI as was the practice earlier.” Addressing a press conference on the same issue, Sharma said similar information was missing on CEO websites in states where assembly polls were held recently such as Kerala (2021), Goa (2022), Punjab (2022) and Karnataka (2023).
She maintained that erasing the booth name will have “multiple dimensions as far as any booth level analysis is concerned”.
“The government has access to all these data and can do the analysis, but it will be difficult for any other political party or independent agency or research scholars to carry out any analysis. That makes the election unfair as equal opportunity to do analysis is lost,” she asserted.
Sharma maintained that for any “analysis of voters’ behaviour and EVM malfunctioning, long-term data, specific to the booth is required”.
“Once the identity of the booth is lost, such analysis of voting in a particular booth becomes virtually impossible,” she added. PTI SSG SSG ACD
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