High Court junks plea to advance date of vote counting in Tamil Nadu

The Madras High Court on Wednesday dismissed a writ petition for quashing the Lok Sabha election notification issued for Tamil Nadu, fixing April 19 as the polling date and June 4 as the date for the counting of votes.

Chief Justice Sanjay V. Gangapurwala and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy rejected the plea from writ petitioner Ezhilan to issue a direction to advance the date of counting to avoid the long gap of 45 days between polling and counting.

A. Rajini, counsel for the petitioner, argued that providing such a long gap of 45 days went against the spirit of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, which provides for the conduct of free and fair elections. She also claimed that it was arbitrary and illegal to delay the counting.

However, when the Chief Justice wanted to know whether there was any provision in the 1951 Act that requires the Election Commission of India to count the votes within a specific period, counsel admitted that the Act has no such provision.

After recording her submission, the judges wrote, “We do not find that the present petition espouses any public cause. It is more in the nature of a publicity interest litigation. The date of polling and counting has to be determined by only the Election Commission of India.”

Since the election has to be conducted across the country, the Commission had decided to conduct it in seven phases from April 19 till June 1 and then count the votes polled in all the seven phases on June 4. Courts could not interfere with such a decision, the Bench said.