New Delhi, Sep 20 (IANS) The Supreme Court on Thursday deferred to September 27 the hearing on pleas of Congress leaders alleging the existence of a large number of duplicate voters in electoral rolls in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
Senior Congress leader Kamal Nath approached the apex court seeking draft voter list of Madhya Pradesh in Word format.
A bench of Justice A.K. Sikri and Justice Ashok Bhushan said the matter requires substantive hearing and listed the matter for September 27.
Kamal Nath said that Election Commission of India (ECI) had provided voter lists in Word format during Karnataka and Rajasthan elections as also during Madhya Pradesh assembly polls in 2013.
However, the Election Commission has said it received complaints of voter profiling and to prevent the misuse of data, a conscious decision has been taken to provide it in PDF format (which can't be edited).
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Nath, contended before the apex court that when the Commission can provide the draft voter list in Word format in other states, then why not in Madhya Pradesh.
On the other hand, senior advocate Vikas Singh, appearing for the poll panel, argued a decision was taken to provide the draft list in PDF format to thwart any attempt of misuse of voter data.
On September 18, the Commission in its affidavit had justified providing the draft electoral rolls in PDF format in Madhya Pradesh without any pictures of voters and said that it was done to prevent manipulation of the electors data.
On allegations about the presence of large-scale duplicate votes in electoral rolls in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, the poll panel has said the allegations are "misleading and misconceived".
The poll panel asserted that it had always upheld the integrity and purity of the electoral process and was committed to holding "free and fair elections".
Congress leaders Kamal Nath and Sachin Pilot had moved the apex court about a large number of duplicate votes in the electoral rolls of the two states which will go to polls this year.
In Madhya Pradesh, the Congress leaders claimed, there are about 60 lakh duplicate votes.
Kamal Nath and Sachin Pilot are President of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan units of the Congress respectively.
Seeking dismissal of the two petitions with costs, the Election Commission, however, had admitted that during updation of the electoral rolls between January 19 and July 31, "there was a net deletion of around 24 lakh entries from electoral rolls and it is also correct that more than two lakh photo entries were flagged as unclear/blank/repeated photos".
It said that out of these two lakh photo entries, as many as 104,284 were found to be valid. Only 97,687 entries had to be corrected during the updation of the electoral rolls.
The Commission denied malfunctioning of Voter Verified Paper Audit Trails wherein votes were recorded in favour of one party.
