NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday sought responses from the Election Commission and the Union government on a PIL seeking to decriminalise the provision in Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, that makes a person liable for jail term if her complaint about discrepancy in a EVM/VVPAT turns out to be false.
The PIL by Sunil Ahya came up for hearing before a bench of CJI Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna days after a former police officer said he shied away from complaining about discrepancy in the EVM/VVPAT, which he noticed while voting, fearing the stringent penal provision if his complaint was found to be false.
The CJI-led bench sought response from the EC and the Centre as Ahya argued that an amendment carried out in 2013 to Conduct of Election Rules introduced Rule 49MA which, when read with Section 177 of IPC, made it a criminal offence if a complaint against voting machine malfunctioning turned out to be false.
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