CHANDIGARH, Dec 15— Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee president and Lok Sabha MP Amarinder Singh Raja Warring on Monday moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court seeking mandatory videography of the entire vote-counting process for the upcoming Zila Parishad and Panchayat Block Samiti elections in Punjab.
The public interest litigation, filed through advocate Nikhil Ghai, comes ahead of the elections scheduled for Dec. 17 and will be taken up for hearing on Tuesday.
“The petition has been filed in the interest of safeguarding the purity, transparency and credibility of the electoral process,” Ghai told the court on Warring’s behalf.
The plea argues that vote counting is a decisive and inseparable stage of the election process that continues until the formal declaration of results. Despite this settled legal position, the petitioner said, counting in Zila Parishad elections has been conducted without compulsory videography.
“This leaves no objective or verifiable record of the most sensitive phase of the election,” the petition states.
Warring contended that the absence of video recording makes the process opaque and open to arbitrariness and allegations of manipulation, which in turn undermines public confidence in democratic institutions.
The plea relies on constitutional principles, asserting that free and fair elections are part of the basic structure of the Constitution and that lack of transparency during counting violates Articles 14, 21 and 243K.
The petitioner clarified that no election result has been challenged. Instead, the plea seeks preventive safeguards, including directions for mandatory videography of the entire counting process and secure preservation of recordings for a fixed period for possible judicial or statutory scrutiny.
