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The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) has moved the Supreme Court seeking a direction to the Election Commission of India to disclose on its website scanned legible copies of Form 17C Part- I (account of votes recorded) of all polling stations which contains the authenticated figures for votes polled, within 48 hours of the close of polling.
The application, filed through advocate Prashant Bhushan, said, “The inordinate delay in the release of final voter turnout data, coupled with the unusually high revision (of over 5%) in the ECI’s press note of April 30, 2024, and the absence of disaggregated constituency and polling station figures in absolute numbers, has raised concerns and public suspicion regarding the correctness of the said data.”
The Election Commission released the final voter turnout data for two rounds on April 30 revising the figures to 66.14% for Phase I and 66.7% for Phase II. However, the revised data has raised concerns and questioned the accountability of the ECI. The Congress party has criticised the ECI for the delay in sharing the overall turnout data, labeling it as “completely unacceptable.”
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh highlighted two issues with the ECI”s revised data. The ECI published the final turnout figures more than 10 days after Phase 1 and four days after Phase 2 of polling, but did not provide the total number of voters in each constituency. The final turnout represents a marginal increase of less than one percentage point from the provisional figures initially shared by the EC.
The petition in the top court said the data published in the press release dated April 30 (Phase I voter turnout- 66.14% and Phase II voter turnout – 66.71%) when compared with the initial data of April 19 and April 26 respectively shows an increase of nearly 6% in the Phase I data and increase of approximately 5.75% in the Phase II data.
“The ECI not releasing absolute number of votes polled, coupled with the unreasonable delay in release of votes polled data, has led to apprehensions in the mind of the electorate about the sharp increase between initial data and data released on April 30. These apprehensions must be addressed and put to rest,” said the application.
The plea said in order to ensure easy accessibility of the data, a tabulation of the constituency and polling station wise figures of voter turnout in absolute numbers and in percentage form must also be disclosed.
The petition stressed that without the absolute number of voter turnout data, the general public cannot compare the number of votes polled with the number of votes counted as announced in the results and thus, discrepancies, if any, in the two sets of data (no. of votes polled at polling booths and no. of votes counted by EVM) can only be assessed when absolute numbers, and not merely percentages, for each constituency are released by the ECI.
“It is respectfully submitted that unless the exact figures are brought into the public domain, percentage figures are meaningless for the voter”, it said.
The application sought a direction to the ECI to provide tabulated polling station-wise data in absolute figures of the number of votes polled as recorded in Form 17C Part- I after each phase of polling in the ongoing 2024 Lok Sabha elections and also a tabulation of constituency wise figures of voter turnout in absolute numbers.
“Direct the Election Commission of India to upload on its website scanned legible copies of Form 17C Part- II which contains the candidate-wise Result of Counting after the compilation of results of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections,” it said.
