Cannot Interrupt The Polls: SC Refuses To Direct EC To Disclose Booth-Wise Voter Turnout Data

The Supreme Court on Friday declined to grant any interim relief on an application seeking the uploading of Form 17C data on the Election Commission of India website and publication of booth-wise voter turnout data.

The apex court said that it cannot interrupt the polls in response to the plea by the NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), which seeks directions to the Election Commission of India (ECI) to disclose final authenticated data of voter turnout in all polling stations, including the number of votes polled in the Lok Sabha Elections 2024, within 48 hours of polling.

A Vacation Bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Satish Chandra Sharma said as per the Bar and Bench website: "See prayer B of 2019 plea and prayer A of the interim application of 2024 .. keep it side by side. Earlier decisions of Supreme Court stare at your face and say you cannot do this and one judgment of 1985 holds that it can be done but in very exceptional cases.. But in this case why you did not file this application on March 16," the Court asked.

Senior Advocate Dushyant Dave, appearing for the petitioner, said, "We could have filed only after there was disclosures by ECI," Senior Advocate Dushyant Dave replied on behalf of ADR.

The Election Commission informed the Supreme Court on Wednesday that the "indiscriminate disclosure" of polling station-wise voter turnout data and its posting on websites could disrupt the ongoing Lok Sabha elections, already in motion.

According to the poll panel, publicly posting Form 17C, which provides the number of votes polled in a polling station, is not part of the statutory framework and could be prone to manipulation, potentially compromising the integrity of the electoral process. The Commission also refuted allegations of a "5-6 per cent" increase in voter turnout during the first two phases of the Lok Sabha elections, dismissing them as false and misleading.

It noted that the petitioner NGO, the 'Association of Democratic Reforms,' failed to provide any evidence of discrepancies in the voter turnout data. The Commission cautioned that such indiscriminate disclosure could lead to the manipulation of images, including counting results, fostering public mistrust in the electoral process.

The Election Commission noted that the petitioner did not cite any instance where candidates or voters had lodged an election petition based on the allegations raised by the petitioner regarding the Lok Sabha election in 2019.

"This indicates that the allegation of discrepancies in voter turnout data made by the petitioner in the main petition as well as the present application is misleading, false and based on mere suspicion," it said.