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Advocate Mehmood Pracha, who contested in the Lok Sabha elections as an independent candidate from Uttar Pradesh's Rampur parliamentary seat, has approached the Supreme Court alleging that the Returning Officer has not furnished him the copies of the Form 17-C record of votes polled in the constituency.
Pracha has urged the SC to pass direction to the Election Commission of India (ECI) to immediately publish voter turnout data after the election. He has filed an intervention application in an already pending case by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) on a similar issue. Pracha in his application stated that after the conclusion of voting in Rampur on April 30, he had written to the Returning Officer for the supply of the machine-wise data of total votes cast in the polling, as recorded in Form 17-C by the Presiding Officers of the polling stations. However, on May 9 the Returning Officer said that the Form 17-C copies were given to the polling agents who were present at the polling stations and they cannot be given now as they are sealed. On ADR's application, the apex court on May 17 had asked ECI to file its response on an application seeking direction to immediately upload accounts of votes recorded at all polling stations after the close of polling of each phase in the ongoing 2024 Lok Sabha election. During the hearing, the bench had orally asked the ECI about the difficulty in uploading copies of Form 17-C on their website. ADR stated that the ECI delayed the publication of the final voter turnout date for several days after the polling raising apprehensions in the minds of several voters as there was significant variance in the final data from the initial figures. (ANI)
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