Supreme Court seeks EC's response on Congress plea for fair polls in MP, Rajasthan

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday issued notices to the Election Commission on a plea by the Congress that it wasn’t doing enough to check the party’s concerns on fake voters, duplication of voters and discrepancies in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

Twin pleas have been filed in court by senior party leaders Kamal Nath and Sachin Pilot with regard to the voters’ list in both the states in the run-up to polls. Their cases are being argued by senior advocates Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Vivek Tankha, Salman Khurshid and Anoop George Chaudhary. They are being assisted by advocate Aloj K Joseph and Varun Chopra.

Kamal Nath has raised concerns about the voters’ list in MP and Pilot in Rajasthan. They have argued that the voters’ list in both states show duplicate voters in both states running into lakhs.

They have also sought a random verification of 10% of the Voter Verifiable Paper Trail (VVPAT) to check bogus voting. Currently, the EC only verifies only one EVM machine per constituency. They have also sought an increase in the response time for the voter to check his VVPAT trail from the existing seven to 15 seconds. The top court has sought the response of the Election Commission on these prayers.

These responses will have to come by Friday next week when the court reconvenes to hear the case again. Justices AK Sikri and Ashok Bhushan passed the short order after hearing arguments from advocate Singhvi.

He argued that the magnitude of the problem was huge, insisting that a survey conducted by his client at his personal expense had thrown up at least 60 lakh fake voters in just one state –– Madhya Pradesh.

Singhvi urged the court to direct the poll panel to publish the voters’ list in text form and not the scanned form to make it easier to check the veracity of the list. A text mode document can be easily searched for names, he said.

He said at least 7 crore voters in Rajasthan had been added to the electoral rolls but, at the same time, 24 lakh voters had been deleted. He urged the court to further extend the dates for submitting objections to the draft electoral rolls. The deadline lapses on Aug 21, 2018.

The twin pleas have also raised concerns over the security of EVMs to be used in the process.

These, they have alleged, are transported by private parties. They also sought a court direction to the EC to have the EVMs monitored manually and not through mobile apps as is being done now.