New Delhi: The Supreme Court sought Friday to know the views of the attorney general and the solicitor general on a PIL. The PIL has sought a direction to the Election Commission to remove symbols from ballot and EVMs. The plea says that those should be replaced with ‘name, age, educational qualification and photograph’ of candidates. A Supreme Court bench of Chief Justice SA Bobde and Justices AS Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian, without issuing any formal notice to the Centre and the ECI, asked petitioner BJP leader and advocate Ashwini Upadhyay to serve a copy of his petition to Attorney General KK Venugopal and Solicitor General Tushar Mehta.
“You serve the copy to the AG and SG and then we will see. We are not issuing notice at the moment,” the bench said. It listed the matter for further hearing next week.
During the brief hearing, the bench asked senior advocate Vikas Singh, who is appearing for Upadhyay certain points. The Supreme Court bench said it wants to know what the objections are to the election symbol on Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). Singh said that they have written a letter to Election Commission but have not received any response. He said that the petitioner wants these details on EVMs to ascertain the popularity of the candidate.
Singh further said that he has checked up in Brazil where one just gets numbers to contest and no symbols. The bench again asked Singh how poll symbol prejudice the electronic voting process in any way. Singh replied that he would explain the basis on the next date of hearing.
The plea filed by Upadhyay has also sought directions to declare the use of party symbol on EVM illegal, unconstitutional and violative of the Constitution. It said that the best solution to weed corruption and criminalisation in politics is to replace political party symbols on ballot and EVM with name, age, educational qualification and photograph of the candidates.
The petition further said that ballot and EVM, without political party symbols, have many benefits as it will help electors to vote and support intelligent, diligent and honest candidates.
“Ballot and EVMs, without political party symbol, will control dictatorship of political party bosses in ticket distribution and force them to give ticket to those who religiously work for people’s welfare,” the plea has said.
Referring to a study done by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), a non-government organisation working in electoral reforms, the plea said that out of 539 MPs, 233 (43 per cent) have declared criminal cases against themselves.
“Out of 542 winners analysed after 2014 election, 185 (34 per cent) had declared criminal cases against themselves and out of 543 winners analysed after 2009 Lok Sabha election, 162 (30 per cent) had declared criminal cases against themselves. There is an increase of 44 per cent in the number of Lok Sabha MPs with declared criminal cases against themselves since 2009, and the root cause of this bizarre situation is the use of political party symbol on ballot paper and EVM,” the plea said.