Information stored in EVMs cannot be given, rules court
New Delhi, Nov 5 (IANS) Setting aside a Central Information Commission (CIC) order, the Delhi High Court Thursday held that information stored in Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) cannot be made public under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
Justice Sanjiv Khanna overruled the CIC order that asked the Election Commission to reveal information in EVMs to an information seeker under the transparency law.
‘Right to information is an important right. At the same time, maintaining secrecy and confidentiality of the ballot papers is also an equally valuable right,’ the court said.
The court passed the order on a petition filed by the Election Commission challenging the CIC’s order.
The poll panel pleaded that confidentiality of voters has to be protected at any cost and it would be very easy to find out the voting pattern if such information is revealed.
‘We are under law precluded from having access to the information. We have custody of the machines but we don’t have custody of the information contained in the machine,’ the commission said while expressing its inability to disclose the information undeer the RTI plea.
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