New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday declined to pass any direction on a plea that sought the uploading of Form 17C data on the Election Commission of India (ECI) website, which would show the booth-wise voter turnout data.
A bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Satish Chandra Sharma refused to grant any interim relief to petitioners and said it could not interrupt the polls.
The bench said of the seven-phase elections, five phases were over, and the sixth phase was scheduled for Saturday.
A “hands-off” approach was needed in the middle of the election process, observed the apex court while adjourning the application. The bench told the petitioner that the interim prayer raised in the present application was the same as of the petition pending before it since 2019.
“Prima facie we are not inclined to grant any interim relief since prayer A of the 2019 petition is similar to prayer B of the 2024 application. List the interim plea after (summer) vacation,” the bench ordered.
The apex court clarified that it has not expressed any opinion on the merits of the case apart from the prima facie view.
The court was hearing an application filed by the NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) seeking the disclosure of final authenticated data of voter turnout in all polling stations, including the number of votes polled in the Lok Sabha Elections 2024 within 48 hours of the polling.
During the hearing today, senior advocate Maninder Singh, representing the Election Commission of India (ECI), said that the ADR’s application was based on “unfounded suspicions”.
Petitions like these are responsible for reducing the voter turnout because of the “continuous questioning of the process”, said Singh. He said such an attitude – always putting a question mark on the sanctity of the elections – was causing damage to public interest.
Earlier, the ECI had filed an affidavit before the top court and said that voter turnout data based on Form 17C (records of votes polled in each polling station) would cause confusion among voters as it would also include postal ballot counts.
The ECI contended there was no legal right that can be claimed towards publishing final authenticated data of voter turnout in all polling stations.
On 17 May, the Supreme Court asked the ECI to file its response to the application seeking direction to immediately upload accounts of votes recorded at all polling stations after the close of polling of each phase.
ADR has alleged an inordinate delay in the publication of voter turnout data for the first two phases of polling in the elections. The application, besides the delay in publishing the voter turnout details, said there was a sharp spike in figures from the initial turnout percentages released by the ECI.
It sought a direction to the Commission to provide tabulated polling station-wise data in absolute figures of the number of votes polled as recorded, in Form 17C Part-I, after each phase of polling in the ongoing 2024 Lok Sabha elections and also a tabulation of constituency-wise figures of voter turnout in absolute numbers in the on-going 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
It further asked for uploading on the ECI website the scanned legible copies of Form 17C Part-II which contained the candidate-wise result of counting after the compilation of results of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The application said the voter turnout data for the first two phases of the Lok Sabha elections were published by the ECI on 30 April, after 11 days of the first phase of polling held on April 19 and four days after the second phase of polling held on 26 April.
It said the data published by the ECI in its 30 April press release showed a sharp increase (by about 5 to 6 percent) from the initial percentages announced by it on the polling day.
The NGO pointed out the data published in the press release by the ECI on 30 April 30 (Phase I voter turnout, 66.14 percent, and Phase II voter turnout, 66.71 percent), when compared with the initial dates of 19 April and 26 April respectively, showed an increase of nearly 6 percent in the Phase I data and an increase of approximately 5.75 percent in the Phase II data.
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