The Madras High Court on Thursday ordered notices to the Centre and Election Commission of India (ECI) on a batch of cases, including the one filed by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), challenging their decision to permit voters above 80 years of age, the physically challenged and those in quarantine due to COVID-19 to opt for postal ballot during the election.
The first Division Bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy directed the Registry to list the cases after four weeks for further hearing. Though the petitioners’ counsel urged the court to stay the EC’s decision, the Bench said that any order on the issue could be passed only after hearing the counsel for the respondents.
RP Act
Senior counsel P. Wilson, representing the DMK, pointed out that the party had challenged the constitutional validity of Section 60(c) of the Representation of the People Act of 1951 which empowers the ECI, in consultation with the government, to create a new class of voters and permit them to exercise their franchise through postal ballot instead of casting votes at polling booths.
The counsel contended that the legal provision violates the right to secrecy in voting since postal ballots do not guarantee as much secrecy as Electronic Voting Machines do.
Unbridled powers
Stating that secrecy in voting was a sine qua non for ensuring free and fair elections, he said the executive could not be allowed to exercise unbridled power on the issue of granting exemption from visiting polling booths.
Mr. Wilson also pointed out that political parties do not get a chance to audit postal votes unlike the procedure of appointing booth agents to verify the genuineness of voters in polling booths. Stating that persons employed in essential services too had been given the option of postal ballot, he said the term essential services had not been defined clearly.
“The ECI can call any service as essential service,” he said and stated that there was no rationale behind providing postal ballot facility to voters above 80 years of age when any one above 65 years was categorised as a senior citizen for all other official purposes. The extent of disability had also not been prescribed for permitting the differently abled to vote through postal ballot, he said.
