Loktantra Bachao Abhiyan (save democracy campaign) — a collective effort of right outifts — has written to the Khunti Lok Sabha seat returning officer to make public polling booth-wise data in Form 17C part I before the counting day.

The letter written on Friday is addressed to Lokesh Mishra, the returning officer-cum deputy commissioner of the Khunti seat which went to poll on May 13. The seat is witnessing a keen contest between incumbent Union agriculture and tribal affairs minister Arjun Munda from the BJP and the Congress candidate Kalicharan Munda.

“We will be writing to the returning officers of all the 14 Lok Sabha seats in Jharkhand about making the polling booth-wise data in Form 17C Part 1 public. We thought of doing it as there has been an unprecedented increase in the number of total votes polled announced by the Election Commission several days after the actual date of poll. We began from Khunti as it witnessed victory by one of the closest margins in 2019 general election,” said Siraj Dutta, a campaign member.

Arjun won the seat by a wafer-thin margin of 1,445.

“As per the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961 in section 93 (2) the returning officer has to make the polling booth-wise data under Form 17C public if there is a demand,” said Dutta.

The Supreme Court had earlier this month refused to pass an interim order on a petition seeking a direction to the Election Commission to publish on its website the Form 17C data, or the voter turnout data per polling station within 48 hours of the voting coming to an end.

The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) which had filed a petition before the Supreme Court had emphasized the need to put the data out in the public domain, because of what is described as a substantial difference between the initial voter turnout figures released by the Commission and the final figures.

Significantly, the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961 require the EC to maintain two forms — Forms 17A and 17C. Form 17A records the details of every voter who enters a polling booth and casts his vote. Form 17C contains the total number of votes cast.

“We have got reports that several polling agents have not been provided with Form 17C at the booth and so we want it to be with the agents during the counting of votes,” added Dutta.