States can build Vote counting centres instead of requisitioning medical college buildings: Madras HC to ECI

Madras- The Madras High Court has suggested the Election Commission of India (ECI) ask state governments to create an infrastructure that can be used to monitor electronic voting machines (EVMs) during voting and can also be used for storing and counting votes since in every election the Government Medical College buildings are in demand for several months and crores of rupees are spent on their repairs.

The judges also felt that it is wrong to use general educational institutions or medical colleges as counting centres as it could impact students for several months due to restrictions on movement. On this, Chief Justice Sanjay V. Gangapurwala and Justice D. Bharat Chakraborty said that a new building can be built elsewhere in the city by spending a little more.

Along with this, the judges also said that Madurai Medical College should at least abstain from the next elections and also directed the Madurai Collector to find out if it could be done even for this year’s election and a government counsel to obtain instructions from the Collector by March 22, reports The Hindu.

The direction has been issued on a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by six student leaders of Madurai Medical College to exempt their institution from being used as a counting centre. Typically, during every Lok Sabha election, around ₹2 crore is spent on making temporary changes in the Government Medical College building in Madurai to house the EVMs and count the votes.

Senior Council B. Saravanan said “ECI has decided to use the administrative block of the college for this year's elections”.

Mr Saravanan further added “A library was situated on the ground floor of the building, a pathological laboratory was located on the first floor and the anatomy dissection department, with freezers for storing cadavers, was functioning on the second floor. Access to all these would be hindered, he said and pointed out that the tests for patients of Government Rajaji Hospital were done at the pathological laboratory”.

Meanwhile, ECI counsel Niranjan Rajagopalan said “The commission does not consider the present PIL petition as an adversarial litigation, but it was dependent on inputs from the district administration on a selection of vote counting centres since the latter knows the ground situation better”.

“Many alternative places were inspected but none of them were found suitable from both infrastructure and security perspective”, said Mr Rajagopalan.

Furthermore, the Madurai Police Commissioner had also stated that "It would be better to use the Government Medical College building for this year’s parliamentary elections. The council also stated that the college students, faculty and other non-teaching staff would be allowed access to the pathological laboratory in the administrative block after verification of their identity”.

He further added “It was brought to the notice of the court that Section 160 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 empowers the State government concerned to requisition any premises, vehicle, vessel or animal to be used for election purposes. The Government Medical College in Madurai had as many as nine buildings but only one was to be used as a vote-counting centre”.