SC issues notice to Centre, EC on PIL seeking e-voting, postal ballots for voters away from constituency

Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, February 18

The Supreme Court on Thursday issued notices to the Centre and the Election Commission on a PIL seeking exercise of franchise through a system of postal ballots or e-voting for people stationed outside their constituency.

A Bench headed by Chief Justice of India SA Bobde asked the Ministry of Law and Justice, and the EC to respond to the PIL filed by K Sathyan, after his counsel Kaleeswaram Raj submitted that the electoral laws needed to catch up with modern technology.

“What kind of plea is this? Sitting in England, you will vote here... If you can’t care enough to go to your constituency, why should the law help you,” the Bench commented even as it agreed to examine the issue.

The petitioner has demanded introduction of e-voting by means of a secured remote electronic voting system which would allow citizens to cast their vote virtually. He has sought voting rights for students, NRIs and other people stationed outside their constituency at the time of elections.

An OTP-based system should be evolved for fault-free identification of voters and CCTVs should be installed in all polling booths across India, he submitted.

“Several sections of voters — including internal migrant labourers, employees, students and business professionals stationed outside the constituency, as well as NRIs and overseas migrant labourers on account of their profession, occupation, education, trade, business, marriage etc have been alienated from the electoral process for very long,” the petition read.

Sathyan urged the top court to issue necessary directions to ensure a fair election process by providing double databases for transactions at the central local levels to reduce the chances of data and EVM manipulation.

Maintaining that logistic concerns could not curtail voting rights, he submitted that insistence on physical presence violated the right to equality. Exclusion of a significant part of the population stationed outside their constituencies amounted to deprivation of the right to practice democratic process, he contended.