It is unfortunate that the Election Commission of India (ECI) has not provided detailed voting data of the past rounds of elections, even after demands for such data by opposition parties and others, and has instead given unconvincing reasons for its failure to do so. In previous elections, the ECI put up the data, with absolute numbers and percentages of votes polled, as a matter of standard practice of transparency to ensure free and fair elections.
NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) has petitioned the Supreme Court to direct the ECI to upload the account of votes recorded in all polling stations 48 hours after the polling ends for each phase in the ongoing elections.
The petition also sought absolute figures of the number of votes polled, as recorded in Form 17C Part-I, and a tabulation of constituency-wise figures of voter turn-out in absolute numbers. It was pointed out that there was a mismatch in the voting percentage data in the first two rounds.
The ADR said the final voting figures showed an abnormal increase of 6 per cent over the preliminary data. It said there was a sudden spurt in actual voter turn-out in all the phases of the polls and questioned the delay in releasing the final figures.
The petition also sought uploading on the EC website scanned legible copies of Form 17C Part-II, which contain the candidate-wise result of counting after the compilation of results.