BENGALURU: Setting aside the election of Congress leader KY Nanje Gowda as MLA of Malur Assembly constituency of Kolar district as the District Election Officer (DEO) failed to provide the video recording of counting of votes for verification, the Karnataka High Court on Tuesday directed the Election Commission of India (ECI) to recount the votes and declare results afresh within four weeks.
All other procedures after the declaration of results too should be followed in accordance with law, it said. Justice R Devdas directed the ECI to take appropriate action against the DEO for failing to furnish the video recording to verify the allegations made by the petitioner on the disparity in counting of votes.
The court passed the order on the petition filed by KS Manjunath Gowda, a defeated candidate from BJP, questioning Nanje Gowda’s election in the May 2023 Assembly elections. But on a request by Nanje Gowda’s counsel, the court stayed its order for a month to enable him to approach the Supreme Court against this order.
The court noted that when the DEO failed to produce the video recordings, a notice was issued to ECI.
DEO failed to produce video recordings: Court
After summonses were issued, the DEO filed affidavits along with communication made to the service provider. The service provider replied that it had handed over the hard disk containing the video recordings and after receiving all the data, the DEO had issued a completion certificate. The ECI is aware of these developments, but all efforts made by this court to secure the video recordings went in vain, the court observed.
Praying the court to declare Nanje Gowda’s election void under Section 100(1)(d)(i) to (iv) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, the petitioner had sought recounting of votes and to declare him the elected candidate.
The court said that during the course of the examination-in-chief and cross-examination, the DEO failed to produce video recordings of the counting, barring the video recording of the VVPAT process though it is mandatory under law.
Pointing to the apex court verdict in the case of Vijay Bahadur vs Sunil Kumar and others, which emphasises that every document pertaining to an election is important and efforts should be made to preserve them, the high court said the apex court had held that the directions issued by the high court for recounting would be justified when important documents of election are missing and such absence was unexplained.
The petitioner alleged that the returning officer (RO) and his team of election officers had obtained signatures of counting agents of the petitioner even before EVMs were opened, in violation of Rule 66A of the Rules, 1961. The RO did not pass any order on the petitioner’s application for recounting and there was a wrong tabulation of voters by RO, he alleged.
It was also alleged that the signatures of counting agents of the petitioner were not obtained in many of Form-17C Part II, and the RO contended during his examination that the petitioner’s counting agents were not available at the table. Also, unauthorised persons were permitted to enter the counting centre.
The court said the veracity of such allegations could be easily verified by looking at the videograph, which is not available.