Chennai: A public interest litigation has been filed in the Madras high court to direct the Election Commission of India to display the contesting candidates photograph, educational qualification, profession, assets and criminal cases in addition to the existing details displayed outside the polling station of all elections.
In his PIL, E. Muralidharan, an academician and a voter from Mylapore constituency, submitted that the election reforms were the continuous process and each reform takes a step towards strengthening our democracy. As an election reform about a decade back, the ECI introduced the voters identification card to all the voters. This has largely prevented the bogus voting. In addition, the voter ID card serves as a proof of identity for the citizens in the country, he added.
He said the ECI provides the identity of the candidates contesting in various elections both Legislative Assembly and the Lok Sabha except name, address, party affiliation and symbol allotted and these information were printed in Tamil and English languages in Tamil Nadu and pasted on the wall at the entrance of all polling stations. Further, the ECI has also added contesting candidates photograph in the voting machine only. These information were insufficient for the voters to decide the right candidate to choose and elect and to represent them in any of the elected forums, he added.
He said in fact, the ECI collects all the information like qualification, profession, property details and criminal antecedents and these information were displayed in the returning officer's office and uploaded in their website. Therefore, he sent a representation to the ECI prior to the Lok Sabha elections 2014 requesting to display all the particulars of the candidates in the polling stations but the ECI merely forwarded the same to the RDC Central, South and North. Hence, he sent an application under RTI to display information of candidates. The ECI replied that this information was collected from the candidates and were available in the ECI's website. The internet users in India was only 34 per cent of the population mostly residing in urban areas. Further, the returning officer's office was generally located far away from the constituencies and thus, the information collected by the ECI does not serve the intended purpose of enlightening the voters of the person they were electing. Therefore, he filed
the present petition, he added.
