Yesterday, supreme court reprimanded election commission of India for not producing election counting video.
It's an election results related dispute matter in supreme cout. In which, the congress candidate T D rajegoda had won the sringeri assembly seat in Karnataka by a margin of 201 votes. But the bjp candidate challenged this in the Karnataka high court. The high court ordered a recount of postal ballot votes and re-verification of 279 rejected postal ballot votes. In recounting, the congress candidate lost the election by 255 votes.
Then the congress candidate approached the supreme court contending that the high court had only ordered the re-verification of 279 rejected postal ballots, but the returning official illegally reconsidered more postal ballots, which had gone to the BJP candidate.
Then, the supreme court asked for "observers report" as well as the video recordings of 2023 vote counting and recent counting.
The ECI councel said, it was unable to find the video of 2023 counting. To this, the visibly annoyed bench said "how can ECI say that it has lost the its record? Your whole purpose is to hold elections, and you need to have a document... There is no custody of record.
Then bench said... "Whatever there is, produce by the next date of hearing. Otherwise, we will have to draw adverse inference against you. We will not accept these kind of lame excuse".
As per election rules, ECI has to maintain all the rules related to elections for 45 days from the election result. If there is any legal dispute emerge regarding election, then it will preserve all the records related to that dispute as long as case is not settled. And any petition related to election dispute can be filled within 45 days.
So, how can election commission say that they have no record? Are they above the law? Or are they trying to hide something?
The integrity of the election commission is the all time lowest, people are losing faith in electoral democracy. We need to save it.