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The Madras High Court on Wednesday dismissed a writ petition that sought to quash the Lok Sabha election notification issued for Tamil Nadu, fixing the date of polling as April 19, 2024 and the date of counting of votes as June 4, 2024.
Chief Justice Sanjay V. Gangapurwala and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy rejected the plea made by the writ petitioner Ezhilan, to issue a consequential direction to advance the date of counting without the long gap of 45 days between polling and counting.
The petitioner’s counsel A. Rajini argued that providing such a long gap of 45 days was 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 of votes.
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, the counsel accepted that there was no such provision in the Act.
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 elections have to be conducted across the country, the Commission had decided to conduct it in seven phases beginning from April 19 to June 1 and then count the votes polled in all the seven phases on June 4. The courts could not interfere with such a decision taken by the ECI.
“It will not be within the domain of the High Court by exercising its powers under Article 226 (writ jurisdiction) of the Constitution to interfere with the election programme. Article 329 (bar to interference by courts into electoral matters) of the Constitution also would not permit to interfere with election programme,” the Bench said.
