Friday , November 22 2024

Nothing illegal in banning mobile phones at polling stations: High Court

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Mumbai: The Bombay High Court has said there is nothing illegal in the Election Commission’s decision to ban the use of mobile phones at polling stations in the upcoming assembly elections.

Chief Justice D. Of. Upadhyay and Justice. Borkar bench rejected the PIL filed by lawyer Ujjwala Yadav against the decision to ban mobile phones.

The PIL seeks direction to the Central and State Election Commissions to allow voters to use phones. It was submitted that voters can show their identity card through mobile through DigiLocker app launched by the Ministry of Information Technology.

The court said that the Election Commission has the power to take steps to facilitate the conduct of the election process. The process of conducting elections is challenging and you say in the application that you show the documents in DigiLocker. No one has been given the right to verify documents through DigiLocker only on the phone. We did not find anything illegal in this decision, the petition was rejected.

It was also claimed in public interest that people would be discouraged from voting due to lack of facility to deposit mobile phones at polling stations.