‘Submit details of postal ballots’

A division bench comprising Justice C V Karthikeyan and Justice Krishnan Ramasamy before whom a plea moved by a teacher-stating that out of the six lakh government employees who were deployed for election duty, almost 50,000 of them were denied Form 12 and 12-A to exercise their franchise, directed the counsel appearing from the Election Commission to file the details on May 17.

The petitioner, K. Santha Kumar, who is serving as a teacher at the Government Higher Secondary School at GKM Colony in the city, submitted that a person on election duty can submit Forms 12 and 12-A to enable them avail Election Duty Certificate (EDC). Based on this, those in receipt of EDC can exercise their franchise where they are posted on election duty, and those who obtain postal ballots can exercise their franchise either at that training centers or through the Postal department.

Also, despite the Commission holding that as per the database of those on election duty the District Election officers (DEO) shall issue Forms 12 and 12A to the entire election duty staff without fail to enable them in obtaining either postal ballots or EDC to exercise their franchise, many of the DEOs failed to issue pre-filled Form 12 to get postal ballot citing flimsy reasons.

Based on this, he sought for a direction from the court to issue form 12 and 12A to those left out as per the database by the respective departments, and enable them to exercise their franchise at least five days before the counting date on May 23.