NEW DELHI: As the Election Commission of India (ECI) is yet to give an actual voter numbers for the Lok Sabha elections held in the five phases, all eyes are now on the Supreme Court, which will hear the matter on May 24.
Last week, the SC issued notice to the EC on an application filed by NGO Association of Democratic Reforms to publish the absolute number of votes of all polling stations in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections. The NGO also demanded that the ECI should disclose on its website the number of votes polled within 48 hours of polling.
Speaking to this newspaper, Jagdeep S Chhokar, founder of ADR said that he is eagerly waiting for the SC hearing on the 24. “In our application, we sought a direction to the EC to upload scanned copies of Form 17C, which records the number of votes polled in a booth, soon after the elections. If the SC asks ECI to upload the copies of Form 17C, then it will have to upload the copies of Form 17C of the previous phases and the future phases as well,” he said. The SC is hearing the petition on the eve of the sixth phase of polling. The seventh and final phase of the polling will be held on June 1. In 2019, ADR filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking a probe into alleged discrepancies between voter turnout and the number of votes counted in 347 constituencies in the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
Chhokar points out that in 2019, the ECI had released absolute numbers of gender-wise turnout for the four-phase Lok Sabha elections.
However, the EC withdrew the 2019 data for the Lok Sabha elections from their website after discrepancies were pointed out between voter turnout and the number of votes counted at least in 347 constituencies.
Over the last few weeks, Opposition parties, including Congress, CPM and Trinamool Congress, have written letters to the EC over the delay in release of final voter turnout and to publish the total number of voters in each parliamentary constituency.
Congress raised questions over the big difference between the real time voter turnout data and the final figures released by the Election Commission, and said voters are worried over the “strange goings-on” in the poll body.
Congress leader and head of media and publicity department Pawan Khera said the difference is around 1.7 crore votes, and termed it as unprecedented. “Voters are worried about the strange goings-on in the EC through the four phases of voting. First, the Election Commission takes 10-11 days to bring out the final figure of voting and then the difference between real time data and final figure turns out to be 1.7 crore votes,” Khera said.
AICC general secretary Jairam Ramesh said, “This difference of 1.07 crore overall translates into an increase of 28,000 in each LS seat. This is huge .” “The discrepancy is maximum in states where BJP is expected to lose seats heavily. What is happening?” Ramesh asked. In the five phases, voting has been completed in 428 seats and twenty five states.
