New Delhi: A bench of Justices R.M. Lodha and Kurian Joseph questioned the Election Commission on its reluctance to allow service personnel to cast votes in constitutencies of their posting, saying that the EC was taking a “hard and technical” stand that resulted in the statutory right of citizens being taken away.
“What surprises us is that when the EC desires 100 per cent polling, why should the commission do anything which deprives a person his right to vote,” it said.
The EC justified its stand saying that allowing defence personnel to become voters at the place of their posting would change the demography of the area. “There are areas in J&K and in the Northeast where defence personnel outnumber the local population,” senior advocate Meenakshi Arora, appearing for the EC, said.
The bench, however, was not satisfied, and said: “We don’t find any logic. It is not by choice that these people are posted there. They are there to perform their duty. Why can a person posted at a place not be treated as an ordinary voter there? It is a strange stand... The EC is doing a wonderful job in bringing transparency in the election process, but we don’t know why it is rigid on this issue.”
After deliberations that lasted for about an hour, the EC budged from its stand and said that those service personnel who have not made a declaration till now to cast their vote through postal ballot “may register themselves as ‘general voters’ in the constituencies where the election process has not yet commenced”.
The bench then asked the EC why it was adamant on the condition of working at the respective station for at least three years and living with their families.
Facing intense queries, the commission agreed to allow defence personnel to get registered as voters at the place of posting. It, however, said that 13 lakh out of 15.5 lakh personnel have registered for postal ballot, and the registration process is complete in 225 constituencies. The bench asked the commission to register defence personnel as voters in the remaining constituencies. It also asked the Centre to provide within two days data of such peace stations to the commission.
