New Delhi: Parties in the opposition INDIA bloc wrote to the Election Commission (EC) on Saturday (June 1) asking it to rescind a 2019 letter no longer requiring election officials to wait for postal votes to be counted in order to finish counting electronic votes.
Their letter said the 1961 Conduct of Election Rules say the returning officer, an official who oversees elections in a constituency, must first count postal votes and that in the 2020 Bihar assembly election, the number of postal votes exceeded the winning alliance’s margin of victory.
It added that there was a “huge outcry” in the election when postal votes were counted “at the end of counting” electronic votes.
According to the opposition alliance, a rule was in effect until 2019 saying the penultimate round of counting electronic votes in a constituency could not take place till postal votes were counted and their results declared.
It cited the EC as saying in a 2009 directive that “under no circumstances” could polling officials complete all rounds of counting electronic votes before they had finalised counting postal votes.
But in 2019, the EC issued a directive no longer requiring officials to wait for postal votes to be counted and declared before proceeding with the penultimate round of counting electronic votes, the INDIA alliance said.
Section 54A of the 1961 Rules says returning officers “shall first deal with the postal ballot papers”, and a handbook the EC issued for returning officers in 2023 says officials can only start counting electronic votes 30 minutes after they have started counting postal votes.
The INDIA parties said the EC’s 2019 directive “undermines the purpose for enacting” section 54A of the 1961 Rules and that the EC “cannot nullify the rules through executive directions” by issuing letters.
This is in view of what happened in the 2020 Bihar elections and that the Union government has allowed postal voting in larger numbers than before in this general election, their letter also said.
“We reiterate our stand that guidelines/notices/letters of [the EC] can in no way be used to dilute the rules established under law,” the letter read, adding to say that the EC must rescind its 2019 letter and direct returning officers to complete counting postal votes and declare their results before completing counting electronic votes.
The alliance discussed this issue, as well as others related to the counting process, with the commission on Sunday (June 2), Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitaram Yechury said.
