What Is Form 17C? Another Controversy Related To Elections Explained

The Election Commission of India is again in the spotlight after it submitted before the Supreme Court that it cannot disclose the voter turnout data based on Form 17C. The ECI said that releasing Form 17C data will cause confusion among voters as it will also include postal ballot counts. On the other hand, the INDIA bloc supporters questioned the ECI's move and its decision to not upload the data on the poll body's website. 

Opposition Leader, Party's Stand On Form 17C

Former Congress leader and Rajya Sabah MP Kapil Sibal said, "Form 17 is signed by the Presiding Officer and given to the polling agent at the end of polling. The information is also directly sent to ECI. Now why does the ECI not put that data on the website? What's the problem? What can happen in the process is the number of votes that are counted would in fact be more than the number of votes that are polled. We don't know what's correct. Why ECI is hesitating to put it on website? Nobody can morph it. Parties are having doubt."

DMK IT wing said that it has collected Form 17Cs from 68,320 polling booths in Tamil Nadu. "Work on collation of data and analysis of the same (by Parliamentary Constituency) have been going on over the past 25 days. The same is being shared with our leader Thiru MK Stalin for his perusal," said the DMK in a tweet.

It further said, "Our booth-level workers have been systematically trained in the process of tracking the number of votes polled and ensuring that the data in Form 17Cs matches the data in the control unit, ballot unit and VVPAT. Moreover, unique IDs of the Voting Machines are compiled to ensure verification at the counting centres. The DMK IT Wing will ensure that all our representatives are armed with the correct data on Counting Day to ensure due process is followed, leading to a massive victory for DMK and its allies."

What Is Form 17C?

The Form 17C records the votes polled in each polling station. The EC said Form 17C needs to be given only to the polling agent and rules do not permit the giving of Form 17C to any other entity. It contains the account of the votes polled at a particular booth. The Form 17C contains the identification numbers of the EVMs, the total number of electors at that booth, the total number of voters at that booth, the total number of voters who decided to not cast their votes after signing the register, the number of voters who were not allowed to vote; and a total number of votes recorded per EVM.

Form 17C can be used in case of a legal dispute related to the poll result.