New Delhi:The Supreme Court on Friday directed the Election Commission of India to preserve video clips of the polling during the pendency of the plea challenging its decision to increase the maximum number of voters per polling station from 1,200 to 1,500.
The matter came up before a bench led by Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna and comprising Justice Sanjay Kumar. During the hearing, the counsel, representing the poll watchdog, requested the bench to grant some time to file its response on the plea filed by one Indu Prakash Singh. The bench told the ECI's to ensure that the video recordings of the polling are not erased during the pendency of the matter.
"The counsel appearing for respondent number 1 prays for further time to file an affidavit. Let the affidavit be filed within three weeks from today. We deem it appropriate to direct respondent no 1 (ECI) to maintain the CCTV recordings as they were doing earlier," said the bench, in its order.
Earlier in this month, the apex court had sought response from the Centre and the poll panel on a plea by Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh challenging the recent amendments, including no public access to CCTV, to the 1961 election rules.
On December 2, 2024, the top court, while hearing Singh’s PIL, asked the ECI to explain how an EVM, which can record 1500 votes, would cater to a polling booth having over 1500 voters. During the hearing, senior advocate Maninder Singh, representing the ECI, opposing the plea, argued that the allegations against EVMs will continue, and the polling has been happening like this since 2019. The counsel added that political parties are consulted before this.
The petitioner has challenged two communications issued by the Election Commission in August 2024 increasing the number of voters per polling stations in each constituency across India. The plea contended that the decision to increase the number of voters per polling booth was arbitrary and not based on any data.
In the previous hearing, on October 24, the top court had declined to issue any notice to the poll panel but allowed the petitioner to serve the copy to the standing counsel of the Election Commission so that its stand on the issue is known.
