EC cites Kamal Nath judgment to counter Rahul Gandhi's 'vote chori' charges. What was the 2018 SC order?
The Congress leader, speaking at a recent press conference on Thursday, alleged that multiple entries and duplications in the voter list compromise the integrity of the electoral process.
The Election Commission of India has rejected Gandhi's claims and disregarded established legal procedures. On Friday, the Election Commission cited "The Kamal Nath judgement" that, it said, gives a settled position to the machine-readable document. The poll panel stated that repeatedly raising the same issues shows that Rahul Gandhi has no respect for the Supreme Court of India's decisions.
"Law provides a specific procedure for both making objections to the roll and for appealing. Instead of availing the legal processes, he tried to sensationalise the issue by making baseless claims in the media," the poll panel sources said.
The ECI is referring to allegations made in 2018 by then Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) president Kamal Nath that were rejected by the Supreme Court reliability of ECI's voter databases.
In 2018, Kamal Nath had approached the Supreme Court claiming that the electoral rolls in Madhya Pradesh showed multiple entries of the same faces, up to 36 times, based on data sourced from a private website. The court, however, found no merit in the claim, particularly after the Election Commission of India (ECI) demonstrated that the supposed discrepancies had already been rectified months prior to the petition. The court refused to grant the relief sought, including the demand for searchable PDF formats of electoral rolls.
Rahul Gandhi alleged that similar discrepancies still exist, including multiple entries of the same name across different states. One example he cited was a voter named Aditya Srivastava, allegedly listed in three different State rolls. However, ECI sources assertively said that this error had been corrected months ago, and the updated rolls had been duly published.
The poll panel said it is a settled proposition that if law requires a certain thing to happen in a certain manner, then it should be done in that manner only and not in any other manner. "Therefore, if Rahul Gandhi believes in his analysis and believes that his allegations against ECI are true, he should have respect for law and sign the Declaration or Apologise to the Nation for raising absurd allegations against ECI," is said.
Kamal Nath had sought directions from the Supreme Court for the Election Commission to conduct VVPAT verification in at least 10 per cent randomly selected polling stations and to publish the draft voter list in 'text format' ahead of the Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections in November 2018. In his petition, Kamal Nath said his party identified 60 lakh duplicate voters in the electoral rolls in Madhya Pradesh.
Kamal Nath had demanded that draft electoral rolls be published in word format in place of the current practice of having them on the website of the Chief Electoral Officers to help weed out the fake names.
The SC bench of Justices AK Sikri and Ashok Bhushan found force in the Election Commission's argument that the Election Manual provides for publishing the draft electoral roll in 'text mode'. Kamal Nath cannot claim as a right that the draft electoral roll should be placed on the website in a 'searchable mode,' the court said.
'It is for the ECI to decide the format in which the draft electoral roll is to be published,' Justice Sikri, who wrote the judgment, said.
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Economic Times
4 minutes ago
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No legal mandate to publish list of excluded voters: ECI to Supreme Court
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The Election Commission of India (ECI) has told the Supreme Court that the law does not mandate it to "prepare or share" any "separate list" of names of electors not included in the draft electoral rolls . Also, ECI has argued that the law does not require it to "publish" the "reasons" for non-inclusion of an individual in the draft electoral rolls. "The statutory framework does not require the commission to prepare or share any separate list of names of people not included in the draft electoral rolls, or publish the reasons for non-inclusion of anyone in the draft electoral rolls for any reason," the affidavit reads. This has been submitted by ECI in response to an application filed by Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) seeking details of 65 lakh names dropped from the recently published Bihar draft electoral roll as part of an ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR). Productivity Tool Zero to Hero in Microsoft Excel: Complete Excel guide By Metla Sudha Sekhar View Program Finance Introduction to Technical Analysis & Candlestick Theory By Dinesh Nagpal View Program Finance Financial Literacy i e Lets Crack the Billionaire Code By CA Rahul Gupta View Program Digital Marketing Digital Marketing Masterclass by Neil Patel By Neil Patel View Program Finance Technical Analysis Demystified- A Complete Guide to Trading By Kunal Patel View Program Productivity Tool Excel Essentials to Expert: Your Complete Guide By Study at home View Program Artificial Intelligence AI For Business Professionals Batch 2 By Ansh Mehra View Program Pertinently at the outset, ECI, in its affidavit, has submitted that the list of approximately 65 lakh electors whose names have not been included in the draft roll has been shared with political parties. It has further submitted that since "neither the law nor guidelines provide for preparation or sharing" of any such list of previous electors whose enumeration form is not received for any reason during the enumeration phase, "no such list can be sought by the petitioner as a matter of right." by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like 25 Best Cities for Living Undo The poll body has said that the petitioner (ADR) "can reach out" to political parties to "gather" the said list. Noteworthily, ECI has said that "exclusion of a name from the draft electoral roll does not amount to deletion of an individual from the electoral rolls". It added, "The draft roll simply shows that the duly filled enumeration form of existing electors has been received during the enumeration phase." Elaborating, the poll body has submitted that "but, on account of human involvement in execution of this exercise of scale, there is always a possibility that an exclusion or inclusion might surface due to inadvertence or error. It is for this reason that the law provides a remedy that if the Electoral Registration officer (ERO) is of the view that owing to inadvertence or error during preparation, the names of any electors have been left out of the draft roll, the ERO has the power to take remedial action."It added, "It is for this reason that issuance of reasons for exclusion of names from the draft rolls is not contemplated in the statutory framework governing the preparation of electoral rolls." Live Events Giving reasons for not preparing or sharing reasons for exclusion of electors in the draft rolls, ECI has submitted that "no inquiry is done for the inclusion of anyone's name in the draft rolls, and each and every individual whose, enumeration form, has been received, has been included in the draft rolls, without any reservation or exception."
