New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday refrained from giving any directions to the Election Commission of India (ECI) in a petition that sought it to reveal the votes verified for authenticity. The court reiterated that the election commission should refrain from interfering during the current Lok Sabha polls.
A division bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice Satish Chandra Sharma, while stressing that judicial interventions can interfere with ongoing processes during an active electoral period, made the following observations.
“We cannot pull out of something part way through. .. It is impossible to be active between the start of the election campaign and shortly after the polls have closed. Leave allot of freedom to the application, that it be heard along with the main writ petition. We cannot halt the process as it goes on continuously at the set pace from sunrise to sunset. But why to abandon such a well-structured law which is so beneficial for the society?” the bench asked. The Allahabad High Court served a contempt notice to the ECI, thereby challenging the latter’s failure to upload booth-wise voter turnout figures to its website per the court’s directions. Another similar writ petition filed by a candidate for Krishnanagar seat in West Bengal, Mahua Moitra, a contender belonging to the Trinamool Congress turned parliamentarian who lost in the parliament elections, was also on the list along with the ADR plea.
While responding to the allegation, the learned senior counsel for the ECI, Maninder Singh, stated it is unwise to address correspondence such as this one during the electoral period since the application was timeously filed when the exercises were underway. “It is an election over seven phases, and tomorrow is the sixth phase,; this particular compliance that you are seeking is going to involve manpower and regulatory compliance,” the bench said to Dave, representing ADR and Singhvi, representing Moitra.
In its order, the Supreme Court noted that the plea in the ADR case was identical to the interim application being considered now, wherein the former had been filed in 2019. The bench wanted to know why ADR chose to file a petition in April when the election process had already commenced.
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