A petition has been filed before the Supreme Court challenging the decision to employ online voting for the upcoming Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) elections.
The petition has been filed by advocate Pradeep Kumar Yadav who is one of the candidates running for the post of SCBA treasurer seeking directions to the Election Committee of Supreme Court Bar Association, to conduct the upcoming election strictly by way of secret ballot in physical form in terms of Supreme Court Bar Association Bye-laws.
The plea states that online voting/ virtual mode is "impractical and a huge sum of money of the innocent members of SCBA is going to be misused for hiring services of an agency (to conduct the elections)."
The petition has stated that the dates of the upcoming Election for the year 2020-2021 has been announced by the SCBA and is scheduled to be conducted on 27th Feb 2021 and as per the information received from SCBA's official website, the elections will be conducted by virtual mode or hybrid system, where a system will be provided to caste vote electronically and there will be no physical voting will be conducted through secret ballot.
The team from AIIMS had visited the Supreme Court premises after a request to that effect was made by the Additional Registrar of the Supreme Court.
"In view of the probability of spread of Covid in large congregation and feasibility of elections to be conducted on secure online platform, it is desirable that the elections are done on online platform only," the AIIMS team suggested.
"What is the mechanism used by the agency to identify the real voter or no proxy voting will be done, how it will be done and how it can make sure that there will be no mismanagement is a debatable. It is requested before this Hon’ble court to direct the respondent /s to conduct the election strictly as pre the Bye-Law No. 17 of the Supreme Court Bar Association," the petition states.
"If the statute provides for a thing to be done in particular manner, then it has to be done in that manner and in no other manner", if as per the Registered Bye-Laws of the Supreme Court Bar Association, if the elections has to be conducted by the secret ballot it has to be done in that manner only" the plea reads.