Judge recuses from hearing plea on ward-wise vote counting

A Supreme Court judge today recused himself from hearing a plea seeking stoppage of ward- wise counting of votes on the ground that declaration of result of every polling booth struck at the root of right to privacy attached to voting.
As the matter came up for hearing, newly-inducted judge Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, who was sitting with Chief Justice J S Khehar and Justice D Y Chandrachud on the bench, recused himself from the hearing.
The CJI then referred the matter to another bench.
"Is it difficult to manipulate a machine? If it is possible in advanced democracy of the world, then it is possible everywhere," the bench observed, when the counsel said that centralised counting should be directed as it is not possible to tamper with EVMs.

"Let this case be listed before a Bench, which does not comprise one of us (Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul), after four weeks," the bench said.
The top court was hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by Punjab-based advocate Yogesh Gupta submitting that "the uniform way of declaration of result for the entire constituency as a whole would bring balanced growth and balanced funding and it would also reduce cases fuelled by political vendetta, ill-will and hatred".
The petition had said the result is again going to be declared by announcing the outcome of every EVM which would lead to adverse impact on the voters as the political parties would harass the electorate in areas where it has not received the votes.