The Supreme Court on Monday emphasized the need not to deny any voter the opportunity to franchise as it sought details from the Election Commission of India (ECI) on its decision to raise the cap on the number of voters per booth from 1200 to 1500 in 2019.
The bench headed by the CJI Sanjiv Khanna and Justice PV Sanjay Kumar was hearing a PIL filed by Indu Prakash Singh. Regarding the ECI measures, Singh stated that minorities will be affected as implementation will result in more queues, which, over longer periods, may discourage citizens from voting. He argued that the change could actually remove some people from the voting lists and, therefore, deny democracy.
On these occasions, senior advocate Maninder Singh, who was arguing for ECI, responded that the policy had been initiated five years back and the complaints were not very large. He pointed out that many polling booths within a station help to achieve more fluent voting, and not all the voter registrants come at the same time. Singh also said that all political parties are taken into confidence before any decision in the ECI and that he dismissed the petition as an indirect attempt to question the efficacy of EVMs, which the Supreme Court has endorsed.
Yet, the bench raised concerns and sought the ECI to file an affidavit in three weeks’ time to explain why this decision has been arrived at and what steps are being taken so that the voters are not denied or discouraged from coming to exercise their franchise. “We do not want any voter should be disturbed”, said the bench before adjourning the matter for hearing to January 17.
The petition pointed out that where there is a huge turnout of voters, the extension of the voter cap per polling station can result in congestion of the booths. Singh pointed out that in the section that recorded 85-90% poll percentage.
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