New Delhi: The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation (CPI (ML) Liberation) has accused officials from the Election Commission (EC) of denying the Form 17C document to its party’s polling agents after voting on Saturday (June 1).
Form 17C contains booth-wise information on voters in a constituency; their gender makeup; the number of polling booths, EVMs and VVPAT machines; and more importantly, the number of voters who cast their votes.
The CPI (ML) Liberation contested three seats in Bihar – Arrah, Karakat and Nalanda, all of which voted in the last phase of the Lok Sabha polls – as part of the INDIA bloc.
In a June 2 letter to the chief election commissioner, the party’s state secretary Shyam Chandra Chaudhary wrote: “…most of our polling agents were not furnished with Form 17C despite repeated requests for the same. Moreover, our polling agents were misbehaved with for seeking Form 17C, which is mandatory in nature.”
He further said the denial of Form 17C in the three seats and in the Agiaon assembly constituency in Arrah, where a bypoll happened, violated Rule 495 of the handbook for presiding officers, which requires them to furnish an attested copy of Form 17C to every polling agent that demands it.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
“Since we do not have Form 17C, it is impossible for us to verify the details at the time of [the] counting [of] votes, including ballot unit numbers, control unit numbers, total votes polled and all other details which are necessary for [the] counting process,” Chaudhary said, requesting the EC to immediately provide his party with copies of Form 17C in all three seats.
Speaking with The Wire, Bihar MLA and CPI (ML) Liberation candidate from the Arrah Lok Sabha constituency Sudama Prasad said: “The denial of Form 17C to our polling agents only amplifies the suspicion of many people about the lack of transparency in the election process. The EC should be forthcoming in sharing the details instead of making excuses not to share them.”
Prasad also filed a complaint with the EC, referring to a list of booths where he said his polling agents were denied Form 17C. Arrah had a total of 2,249 polling booths.
Chandan, a CPI (ML) Liberation activist, said: “In many booths, election officials told our agents that they had not been given directions from above to share Form 17C. In some other booths, officials said that copies of Form 17C were over. But in some other booths, where our agents insisted and staged a dharna, they were handed a copy of Form 17C.”
The controversy around handing over copies of Form 17C has become a bone of contention between the EC and opposition parties, which have alleged that the commission’s officials have been reluctant in sharing the form with their parties’ polling agents. The controversy snowballed when the EC only shared voter turnout in percentage terms and did not share the absolute number of voters.
There was a nearly six percentage point difference between the initial turnout the EC published for the second phase of the general election and the final turnout figure it published four days afterwards.
Voter turnout figures could be calculated on the basis of Form 17C, as it contains the absolute numbers of those who voted, leaving little doubt on voter turnouts that have been shared by the EC in percentages.
Earlier, in the last week of May, the EC refused to publish copies of Form 17C on its website, citing that it was not legally mandated to share voter turnout to anyone other than polling agents.
The Supreme Court then refused to direct the EC to share Forms 17C after the EC contended that the controversy over the forms was part of a “consistent mala fide campaign to raise doubts against the EC in every possible way by voicing misleading allegations”.
Against such a backdrop, the CPI (ML) Liberation’s allegations on election officers on the ground refusing to share Form 17C with even polling agents will likely raise more suspicions on the alleged opacity maintained by the EC around the election process.
The Wire has sought a response from the EC on the CPI (ML) Liberation’s allegations. The story will be updated when it responds.
