The Madras High Court has suggested that the Election Commission of India (ECI) can ask State governments to create an infrastructure that could be used for storing polled Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and also for counting votes, during every election than requisition government medical college buildings for months together and spend crores of rupees to retrofit them.
Chief Justice Sanjay V. Gangapurwala and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy were surprised to hear that nearly ₹2 crore was to be spent for making temporary alterations to the Government Medical College building in Madurai for storing the EVMs and counting of votes during this year’s Lok Sabha elections. They said a new building could be constructed elsewhere in the city by spending a little more.
The judges also felt educational institutions in general and medical colleges, in particular, should not be used as vote counting centres since it might affect students for months together due to restrictions in movement. They said Madurai Medical College should be avoided at least from the next elections and directed the Madurai Collector to find out if it could be done even for this year’s election.
They directed a government counsel to obtain instructions from the Collector by March 22. The direction was issued on a public interest litigation petition filed by six student leaders of the medical college to exempt their institution from being used as a vote counting cente. Senior Counsel B. Saravanan said the ECI had decided to use the administrative block of the college for this year’s election.
He said 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.
On his part, 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. He said many alternative places were inspected but none of them were found suitable from both infrastructure and security perspective.
Even the Madurai Commissioner of Police had stated in writing that it would be better to use the Government Medical College building for this year’s parliamentary elections, he said. The counsel 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.
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. He said the Government Medical College in Madurai had as many as nine buildings but only one was to be used as a vote-counting centre.
