Representational image of Bombay High Court
| Photo Credit: VIVEK BENDRE
The Bombay High court on Monday issued notice to the Election Commission (EC) and the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) to file a reply to a writ petition filed on January 27, 2025, challenging the Maharashtra Assembly election conducted in November 2024.
The petition filed by Chetan Chandrakant Ahire raised serious concerns regarding the disproportionately high percentage of votes cast during the final minutes and even after the official closing time of polling. There is a non-disclosure of pre-numbered tokens distributed to voters present after the official closing time, coupled with the EC’s failure to release detailed data regarding these anomalies on its official website and its written statement that it did not have the relevant data, the petitioner said. These omissions raised doubts about the security, accuracy, reliability and verifiability of the election process conducted using electronic voting machines.
The petition alleged that on November 20, 2024, the day of voting, approximately 75 lakh votes were cast during the official closing time of polling (6 p.m.) with no transparent system of recording or verifying the authenticity of these votes.
On the day of results, November 23, 2024, several discrepancies were noted in around 95 constituencies in the form of difference in votes cast and counted.
A Division Bench of Justices Ajay Gadkari and Kamal Khata issued notice to the EC and the CEO returnable after two weeks.
Advocate Prakash Ambedkar, assisted by advocates Sandesh More and Hitendra Gandhi for the petitioner, informed the Bench that there were about 6.80% of votes polled from 5 p.m. till end of voting time. “The Returning Officer [RO] is duty-bound to refer the difference in votes polled and counted to the EC for its directions as mentioned in the handbook published by the Election Commission and till that time the right to declare result is suspected and the RO is supposed to declare the result only after the direction from the EC.”
The petitioner said the right to declare the result of each constituency by the RO was binding only under the condition that the votes cast were equal to votes counted. If the votes polled were not matching with the counted votes then the power of the RO stood suspended till the receipt of the direction from the EC, the plea claimed.
Hence the petitioner asked, “Whether the result declared without jurisdiction and without powers is null and void since there have been violations of various norms.”
Published – February 04, 2025 05:10 am IST