The Bombay High Court on Monday issued notices to the Election Commission of India (ECI) and state Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) on a plea raising concerns over alleged discrepancies in the voting process on November 20, 2024, the polling day for Maharashtra state assembly elections, including ‘unusually high percentage of votes’ cast during last minutes and post-closing hours (6 pm).

A bench of Justices Ajey S Gadkari and Kamal R Khata was hearing a writ plea by city resident Chetan Chandrakant Ahire who claimed that over 75 lakh votes were polled after official voting time of 6 pm and several discrepancies were found in over 90 constituencies where number of votes counted did not match with those polled, and there was no transparency in the process.

Advocate Prakash Ambedkar, representing the petitioner claimed that there was no transparent system of recording or verifying authenticity of nearly 75 lakh votes and the Returning Officers (ROs) failed to comply with the guidelines in ECI ‘handbook’ for conducting elections and did not report discrepancies to ECI.

The plea sought directions from the court to ECI to disclose the exact number of tokens distributed to voters after 6 pm at each polling station, and total tokens distributed across all constituency segments. It also sought declaration of total votes cast and polled after 6 pm and in the end sought declaration that results declared by respective ROs of each assembly constituency as ‘null and void’ due to non-compliance of norms, and procedural lapses and also sought immediate withdrawal of election certificates issued by such ROs.

The bench issued notice to respondent authorities and sought their response during next date of hearing after two weeks.