The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Thursday told the Madras High Court that though it had taken a decision on July 18, 2023, to use educational institutions as vote counting centres only as a last resort, Madurai Medical College’s administrative block could not be exempted from being used as a centre for the Parliamentary elections this year.
In a counter affidavit filed before Chief Justice Sanjay V. Gangapurwala and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Satyabrata Sahoo said the medical college had served as a vote counting centre for five parliamentary and five Assembly elections since 1998 and that the Commission could not find any suitable alternative place this year.
The counter was filed in response to a public interest litigation petition filed jointly by college’s student council president M. Raj Mohamed, vice-president B. Yalini, general secretaries Alwin John and J. Anamika, men’s hostel general secretary U.S. Kamalesh and women’s hostel general secretary Swernerekha against the use of their college building for counting of votes.
Senior counsel B. Saravanan, representing the litigants, told the court that not just the students but also the heads of various departments in the college had represented to the Dean regarding the inconvenience caused to them due to the college building being used as a counting centre. Therefore, the Dean had requested to exempt the college.
However, since there was no response from the ECI, CEO and the district administration, the students approached the court. Filing the counter affidavit on behalf of the ECI and the Madurai Collector, Mr. Sahoo said the district administration had indeed received representations from the Dean to find an alternative place.
The Dean had raised concerns regarding the alterations made to the inner structure of the administrative block thereby weakening the building, the functioning of several important laboratories in the building and the difficulties faced by the hostel inmates due to a three-tier security arrangement made to safeguard the Electronic Voting Machines stored in the building.
After the receipt of the representation and the filing of the present PIL petition, the officials inspected various places such as the old building of Madurai Collectorate complex, World Tamil Sangam, Government Law College, Arulmighu Meenakshi Government Arts College, The American College, Tamukkam Convention Centre, Elango Higher Secondary School and Senthamil College.
They also assessed the possibility of shifting the counting centre to the Government Polytechnic College, Thiagarajar College, The Madura College and the Government Agriculture College at Othakadai. However, most of those places were found unsuitable because they did not have large halls (that could be used for counting of votes) next to small rooms to be used for storing the EVMs.
Though some places were found suitable in terms of infrastructure, they ended up being rejected from the security point of view, said ECI’s standing counsel Niranjan Rajagopalan. Therefore, the commission had decided to use the medical college as the counting centre this year with least inconvenience and all students and staff should be issued with identity cards to ensure their free movement, he said.
After hearing both sides, the judges decided to hear the matter next on March 15. The Chief Justice also directed Mr. Rajagopalan to find out, before the next hearing, whether any examination was scheduled during the period when the college building was to be used as the counting centre.
