New Delhi: Two separate petitions filed by senior Congress leaders Kamal Nath and Sachin Pilot were dismissed by the Supreme Court on Friday. Both the petitions sought the top court to direct the Election Commission to avail the draft voter’s list in the states of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan in text format.

On November 28, Madhya Pradesh is slated to vote to get the new government elected and for Rajasthan, the date is set to December 7 for the elections to be held there. The Congress aims to stem out the BJP from power from both the states in the upcoming Assembly elections and hence it sees the elections there to be precursor to the Lok Sabha elections to be held early next year.

The Congress party has alleged in their petition that there were a huge number of duplicate names seen in the voter’s list and demanded the rectification of the error to allow “free and fair elections” in the state.

In his plea, Kamal Nath said that the court should direct the Election Commission to publish the list of the voters in a “text format as per rules,” and not in the PDF format, and then redress all complaints being raised in relation to the electoral rolls before the list gets final publication.

The senior leader from the Congress party also sought the court to direct the election panel to randomly verify the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips with votes cast on electronic voting machines or EVMs in 10 percent of election stations which are randomly-selected in every Assembly constituency.

But both the pleas by the Congress leaders proved to be unsuccessful with the bench comprising A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan saying:  “we have dismissed these petitions.” Kamal Nath has claimed in his petition that as many as 60 lakh names on the voter list in Madhya Pradesh were duplicate.

During the hearing, Senior Advocate Vikas Singh, who was representing the Election Commission, argued with the bench that a huge number of duplicate entries that have made it to the voter’s list have been already weeded out even before the issue was taken up by the Congress party.

The petitioners were represented by Senior Advocates and Congress leaders Abhishek Many Singhvi and Kapil Sibal appeared for the petitioners.

The elections in the states of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh hold very much importance as it is seen as the bellwether before the next year’s general elections, in which the BJP-led NDA is trying to get a second term in power. In the state of Madhya Pradesh, BJP chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan is trying to get a fourth consecutive term in the office and in the state of Rajasthan, the Congress party is attempting to get power from the BJP’s Vasundhara Raje Scindia-led government.

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