Rahul Gandhi's Demand for Digital Electoral Roll Part of Long-Term Strategy: ECI Sources
“It appears that Mr Gandhi may not have been appropriately apprised of the finality with which the matter stands concluded in the judicial record,” ECI sources said.
New Delhi: On Leader of the Opposition Mr Rahul Gandhi’s demand for machine-readable, digital copy of the electoral roll for the last seven months, the sources in Election Commission of India (ECI) on Thursday said that this is not something new but a part of well thought out strategy of the party which it has been following for the last eight years.
Referring to the Supreme Court case of 2019, Kamal Nath v. Election Commission of India, (2019) 2 SCC 260, sources said the demand reiterated by Mr Gandhi is not tenable within the contours of the prevailing legal framework. Sources added that “the LoP and Congress should obey the SC order and not make such extra legal demands on ECI to confuse the public.”
Sources pointed out that this very issue has already been taken up by the Congress before the Supreme Court of India in writ petition WP(C) No. 935 of 2018 filed by Mr Kamal Nath, the then President of the Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee.
“It appears that Mr Gandhi may not have been appropriately apprised of the finality with which the matter stands concluded in the judicial record,” sources said.
On the issue of whether the voter list is to be supplied to the political parties in text mode; albeit in PDF form, in its judgement the SC had in 2019 said, “We find force in the submission of ECI. Clause 11.2.2.2 of the Election Manual uses the expression “text mode”. The draft electoral roll in that mode i.e. text mode, has been supplied to the petitioner. The clause nowhere says that the draft electoral roll has to be put up on the Chief Electoral Officer's website in a “searchable PDF”. Therefore, the petitioner cannot claim, as a right, that the draft electoral roll should be placed on the website in a “searchable mode”. It has only to be in “text mode” and it is so provided.”
“…ECI (in its instructions) has directed its field level functionaries to put only the “Image PDF” of electoral roll in the public domain. We are, therefore, of the opinion that the format in which the draft electoral roll is supplied to the petitioner fulfils the requirement contained in the Election Manual. It may be added that if the petitioner so wants, he can always convert it into searchable mode which, of course, would require him to put his own efforts,” the SC order said.
