SC dismisses petitions by Congress leaders asking EC to provide Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan voters' list in text format

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed two separate petitions of senior Congress leaders Kamal Nath and Sachin Pilot seeking directions to the Election Commission to provide the draft voters’ list in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan in text format. Polls in Madhya Pradesh will be held on 28 November and in Rajasthan on 7 December. A bench of justices AK Sikri and Ashok Bhushan said, “We have dismissed these petitions”. [caption id=“attachment_5184141” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Supreme Court of India. PTI[/caption] The apex court had reserved its verdict on 8 October on the plea of leaders alleging duplication of voters in the list and sought a proper redressal of grievances to ensure free and fair elections. The plea filed by Nath said directions should be issued to publish the voters’ lists in a “text format as per rules”, instead of the PDF format, and expeditious decisions taken on all complaints before their final publication. The senior Congress leader has also said a direction should be issued to the poll panel to randomly verify the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips with votes cast on electronic voting machines (EVMs) at 10 percent randomly-selected polling stations in every constituency. On 18 September, the poll panel had, in its affidavit, justified providing the draft electoral roll in PDF format in Madhya Pradesh without the pictures of the voters and said it was done to prevent manipulation of electors’ data. The pleas of leaders further alleged that according to a survey, there were over 60 lakh fake voters in Madhya Pradesh and similarly, in Rajasthan, there were over 41 lakh duplicate voters. In Rajasthan, the poll panel had added 71 lakh new voters, the plea said, demanding that directions be given to remove inconsistencies and conduct free and fair elections.