No EVMs for civic polls: HC accepts SEC's plea

Chennai, Feb 6 (UNI) The Madras High Court today conceded the State Election Commission (SEC)'s plea that it would not be possible to use Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) for the February 18 civic polls for 100 wards of the Chennai Corporation due to paucity of time.

A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice A P Shah and Mr Justice K Chandru, accepting the submission of SEC's senior counsel G Masilamani, said as only 12 days were left for the poll, it would not be possible to make arrangements for use of EVMs.

The Bench, however, admitted the petition filed by A K Venkata Subramanian seeking a direction to the SEC to deploy and use EVMs for elections in all municipal corporations in the state. It posted the matter to after two weeks.

The SEC said the petition was not maintainable as it had been filed after the election process was initiated on January 29. It had taken steps to introduce EVMs in local body polls in a phased manner.

It had decided to introduce EVMs for 44 wards including two wards in Chennai Corporation as an experimental measure for the February 8 election. At this juncture, 98 councillor vacancies arose on January 18. So the SEC decided to uniformly use ballot boxes and ballot papers instead of EVMs.

For holding elections in 100 wards, as many as 4830 EVMs were required and 11,050 polling officers had to be acquainted with EVMs and trained about the use of EVMs. Each and every machine had to be tested and certified by Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), Bangalore.

As there were time constraints, the SEC thought it fit to proceed with ballot papers. Considering the enormity of the exercise, the prayer could not be conceded.

Also, statutory and non-statutory forms required for election by using ballot boxes and papers had already been printed and were ready for distribution. The first training class was to be held on February 7. In these circumstances, the only feasible thing was to conduct the poll by following the old system.

UNI