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News Excerpt: 

The Election Commission has told the Supreme Court that there was no “legal mandate” to provide the voter turnout data to any person other than electoral candidates or his agents.

More about the news: 

• The apex court had asked the EC to submit a response to a petition by Association for Democratic Reforms, which asked for scanned copies of Form 17C to be uploaded on the EC website as soon as polling concludes.

What is Form 17C?

• The Form 17C records the votes polled in each polling station during Parliamentary and assembly votes. 
• The EC said Form 17C needs to be given only to the polling agent and rules do not permit the giving of Form 17C to any other entity. 
• It contains the account of the votes polled at a particular booth. 
• The Form 17C contains the identification numbers of the EVMs, the total number of electors at that booth, the total number of voters at that booth, the total number of voters who decided to not cast their votes after signing the register, the number of voters who were not allowed to vote; and a total number of votes recorded per EVM.

Voter Turnout: 

• Voter turnout is a module of ENCORE that runs on the poll day that involves the data entry of a two hourly estimated poll percentage entry through ENCORE. 
• This voter turnout data can be monitored by the citizens and media houses via Voter Turnout app which is available in android and iOS both. 
• These percentages get aggregated in the system to find the district and state wise poll percentage.
  

Prayers seeked by the ADR:

• Immediate uploading of clear copies of Form 17C (Account of Votes Recorded) for all polling stations after each phase of the ongoing 2024 Lok Sabha elections on the ECI website.
• Provision of tabulated data showing the number of votes polled at each polling station as recorded in Form 17C Part-I after each phase of polling in the ongoing 2024 Lok Sabha elections, as well as a summary of constituency-wise voter turnout figures in absolute numbers.
• Uploading of clear copies of Form 17C Part-II, which contains the candidate-wise Result of Counting after the compilation of results of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Arguments given by ECI to not disclose polling data:

• The ECI underlined the difference between the statutory disclosure of the number of votes recorded in each polling station in the form of Form 17C and its non-statutory, voluntary disclosure of voter turnout on polling day in the form of press releases and its Voter Turnout app.
• Under Rules 49S and 56C of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, the presiding officer prepares an account of votes recorded in Part-I of Form 17C and makes it available to every polling agent present at the close of the poll, since framework had “held the field for the last 60 years”, therefore, any change would require an amendment to the framework itself.

• Therefore, ECI submitted that there is no legal mandate to make records of votes polled under Form 17C public.

Conclusion:

While transparency and accessibility of electoral data are vital for ensuring the integrity of the democratic process, any change to the current framework would require a legislative amendment. Therefore, a balance must be struck between the need for transparency and the adherence to established legal procedures to safeguard the credibility of the electoral process.