The Election Commission yesterday told the Supreme Court that allegations about the presence of large-scale duplicate votes in electoral rolls in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan were “misleading and misconceived”.
The election watchdog asserted that it had always upheld the integrity and purity of the electoral process and was committed to holding “free and fair elections”.
“The ultimate decision-making authority rests with the Election Commission of India and it cannot be compelled to follow the directives of any particular party or person,” the EC told the court as it described a Congress petition on the matter as “misconceived and mala fide and an abuse of the process of law”.
Congress leaders Kamal Nath and Sachin Pilot had moved the apex court about a large number of duplicate votes in the electoral rolls of the two states which will hold assembly polls this year.
In Madhya Pradesh, the Congress leaders claimed, there were about 6mn duplicate votes.
Kamal Nath and Pilot are president of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan units of the Congress respectively.
The Election Commission, however, admitted that during updating the electoral rolls between January 19 and July 31, “there was a net deletion of around 24 lakh entries from electoral rolls and it is also correct that more than two lakh photo entries were flagged as unclear/blank/repeated photos”.
It said that out of these 2mn photo entries, as many as 104,284 were found to be valid. Only 97,687 entries had to be corrected during the update of the electoral rolls.
The Commission denied malfunctioning of Voter Verified Paper Audit Trails wherein votes were recorded in favour of one party.
It also said “malfunction of an EVM by recording an incorrect vote or of a VVPAT by printing an incorrect vote is a complete conjecture and figment of imagination as no such instance has ever happened during the entire period of use of these machines.”