The Supreme Court on Friday issued a directive to the Election Commission of India (ECI) to preserve the video recordings of polling, amidst ongoing legal challenges concerning the increase in the maximum number of voters per polling station. The order was passed by a bench consisting of Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar, following a request by the ECI for additional time to respond to a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) initiated by Indu Prakash Singh.
Singh’s PIL contests the ECI’s August 2024 communications that proposed increasing the voter capacity at each polling station from 1,200 to 1,500 voters. The Supreme Court has granted the ECI three weeks to submit an affidavit clarifying its stance.
This judicial scrutiny comes in the wake of other related pleas, including one from Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh, which challenges recent amendments to the 1961 election rules. These amendments notably include restricting public access to CCTV footage from polling stations.
Singh argues that the decision to raise the number of voters per booth was made arbitrarily and without adequate supporting data. He highlights that with typical voting taking 60 to 90 seconds per vote, a single Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) at one station could only realistically accommodate between 490 to 660 voters daily, based on an 11-hour voting window.
Given an average voter turnout of 65.70%, this calculation suggests that a station set up for 1,000 voters would see about 650 people casting votes. Singh warns that with voter turnout potentially reaching 85-90% in some areas, the increased cap could result in 20% of voters either waiting past closing hours to vote or leaving without voting due to long wait times—a scenario he deems unacceptable in a democratic society.
