The EC said it wrote to Southern Railway on February 16, 2024 wanting to know if it required the postal ballot facility but did not receive a response before the cut-off date of March 25, 2024

The Madras High Court has sought an explanation from the General Manager, Southern Railway, as to why a request was not placed with the Election Commission of India (ECI) to extend the facility of postal ballots to all railway employees in Tamil Nadu.

The First Division Bench of Chief Justice Sanjay V. Gangapurwala and Justice J. Sathya Narayana Prasad have ordered notice to the General Manager, returnable by April 10, on a public interest litigation petition filed by V. Ram Kumar of Tirumangalam in Madurai district.

ECI counsel Niranjan Rajagopalan told the Bench that the commission had written to the railways as early as on February 16, 2024 wanting to know whether it wanted the facility of postal ballot be extended to its employees too, and had insisted upon a reply by March 25, 2024. Since no reply was received before the cut-off date, the postal ballot facility could not be extended now to the railway employees in Tamil Nadu, the ECI counsel said.

The facility of voting through postal ballot is usually given to persons employed in essential services.

On his part, advocate R. Venkatesan, representing the PIL petitioner, said that his client himself was a railway employee. The petitioner was a former loco pilot, now serving as Chief Office Superintendent in the Madurai Division of the Southern Railway. He said the aim of the ECI to ensure 100% voting could not be fulfilled if a large chunk of railway employees in the State were left out of the process.

The litigant pointed out that the loco pilots, station masters, ticket travelling examiners (TTEs) and so on could not be expected to avail of leave to exercise their right to cast votes during this year’s upcoming Lok Sabha elections and therefore, they ought to have been provided with the postal ballot facility.

Mr. Venkatesan further claimed that the railway employees in Kerala appeared to have been provided with the facility of casting their votes through postal ballot but only those in Tamil Nadu had been denied such a benefit.