HC posted hearing on EVM tomorrow

Chennai, Feb 5 (UNI) Madras High Court today posted for tomorrow further hearing of the petition, seeking a direction to the State Election Commission(SEC) to use Electronic Voting Machines(EVM) during the February 18 civic polls for 100 wards of Chennai Corporation.

When the petition filed by A K Venkata Subramanian, a retired IAS officer, came up for hearing before a division bench comprising Chief Justice A P Shah and Mr Justice K Chandru, senior counsel G Rajagopal filed a statement on behalf of the Election Commission of India (ECI).

In his statement, Mr Rajagopal submitted that if the High Court so indicates to the State Election Commissioner, who in turn could approach the (ECI) for use of EVMs for the local body elections, the ECI can provide the EVMs without insisting on advance procurement, thus making it as a one time expenditure.

This should not, however, be cited as a precedent for future election for local bodies in the state or states, he added.

He said sufficient number of EVMs are available in Chennai City at present. The stated requirement of the SEC was only 4500, but in case the requirement was more than the number of EVMs available in the city, the same can be mobilised from neighbouring districts, he added.

When the bench asked Senior Counsel G Masilamani, appearing for SEC, whether it was feasible to use the EVMs, the latter said the SEC does not want to make a decision in haste and hence time was needed till tomorrow. Following this, the bench posted further hearing to tomorrow.

UNI