Upload postal ballot details, HC tells Election Commission

A division bench comprising Justice CV Karthikeyan and Justice Krishnan Ramasamy offered the direction while disposing a public interest litigation moved by K Santhakumar, a teacher, seeking a direction to all district election officers to issue prefilled Form-12 to those who could not exercise their franchise and consequently issue postal ballots at least five days prior to counting of the votes scheduled for May 23.

Earlier, the counsel appearing for the Election Commission submitted as many as 4.35 lakh government staff were deployed on election duty and all of them were provided with Form 12 and 12A to enable exercise their franchise through postal ballot. But of them 4.10 lakh employees had submitted filled in applications. However, 12,915 applications were rejected owing to certain wrong entries and finally a total of 3.97 lakh ballots were accounted for. The counsel also categorically held that the allegation that over 1.5 lakh staff on election duty were unable to exercise their franchise was utterly wrong.

However, senior counsel NR Ilango appearing for the petitioner submitted that the Election Commission has claimed in its website that 100 per cent of the police personnel on election duty had exercised their franchise. But nothing has been said about the postal ballots pertaining to teachers and other government staff leading to the present confusion.

Recording the same, the bench while directing the Election Commission to upload the postal ballot details regarding teachers and other government staff also directed the Election Commission to ensure that such confusion does not arise in future.

The petitioner had contended that as many as six lakh persons, mostly government school teachers and police personnel, were engaged in election duty. Most of them, including him, could not exercise their franchise for want of Form-12. The officers concerned failed to issue the form on time, he alleged.