New Delhi, June 26: Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi’s persistent demand that ECI provide machine-readable digital copies of the voter lists for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and subsequent Vidhan Sabha elections appears to be legally untenable, said constitutional experts and sources on Thursday.

Election Commission of India insiders said an earlier Supreme Court verdict has already settled the matter in favour of the poll panel.

They suggest that LoP Rahul Gandhi’s repeated attempts to rake up the demand for ‘machine-readable digital copies’ are nothing more than a publicity stunt, as the apex court has already ruled against such a demand.

Poll panel insiders shared excerpts of the Supreme Court’s verdict on a writ petition filed in 2018 by Kamal Nath, the then president of the Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee, that said, “The format in which the draft electoral roll is supplied to the petitioner fulfils the requirement contained in the Election Manual.”

“If the petitioner so wants, he can always convert it into searchable mode, which, of course, would require him to put his own efforts,” said the Supreme Court judgment.

Insiders in the ECI have shed light on the apex court judgment in the backdrop of LoP Rahul Gandhi’s allegation of ‘fixed election’ in Maharashtra last November and the Election Commission’s invitation to him to sit for a doubt-clearing session, an offer which he has not accepted yet.

“While it is factually correct that Rahul Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition, has been demanding a machine-readable, digital copy of the electoral roll for the last seven months, such a demand by the Congress is not new,” said an official source.

The demand, it seems, is part of a strategy by the Congress for well over eight years, a fact that appears to have been selectively obscured in the present representation, he said.

“The position historically maintained by the Indian National Congress is not tenable within the contours of the prevailing legal framework. It may be recalled that this very issue has already been agitated by the Congress before none other than the highest constitutional court of the country,” he said.

An ECI insider cited the Supreme Court decision on the matter, which 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,” said the SC verdict, quoted by the expert.

--IANS

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