The Supreme Court has rejected the ADR petition.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a petition filed by an NGO seeking directions to the Election Commission to upload polling booth-wise voting percentage data i.e. Form 17C on its website. The court dismissed the petition saying that it would be difficult for the Election Commission to employ people to upload polling percentage data on the website. The vacation bench of Justice Dipankar Dutta and Justice Satish Chandra Sharma said that it cannot issue any such direction at present as 5 phases of the election have been completed and 2 phases are remaining.
The court said, this would be like giving relief in the main petition
The Supreme Court adjourned the interim application (AI) filed by the NGO ‘Association for Democratic Reforms’ (ADR) and it will be listed before the regular bench after the elections. The bench said that prima facie it appears that the request made in the application is similar to the main petition pending since 2019 on the same issue. The bench said that it would be difficult for the Election Commission to engage people in the work of uploading polling percentage data on the website. The bench said, ‘Giving any relief in the interim petition would be equivalent to giving relief in the main petition, which is pending.’
The Supreme Court had sought a reply on the petition of the NGO
On May 17, the Supreme Court had sought a week’s response from the Election Commission on the NGO’s plea seeking direction to upload polling station-wise voting percentage data on the Commission’s website within 48 hours of completion of polling for each phase of the Lok Sabha elections. ADR filed an interim application in its 2019 PIL in which it appealed to direct the Election Commission to upload ‘scanned readable copies of Form 17C Part-I (Recorded Votes)’ of all polling stations immediately after polling. (Language)
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