Court to hear plea on allowing voters to carry phones to polling booth on Monday

The Bombay High Court on Tuesday said that it would hear a petition seeking permission to allow general voters to carry their mobile phones to polling centres and be allowed entry by showing their identity proof through the Digi Locker application.
The bench of Chief Justice DK Upadhyaya and Justice Amit Borkar was hearing a petition filed by Ujala Yadav, an advocate and “a politically active member of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena”.
The plea was mentioned before the bench for urgent hearing, citing the Maharashtra Assembly elections on November 20. The bench directed the standing counsel for the Election Commission of India to appear before it on November 18, when it would hear the petition.
It stated that election officers and staff are allowed to carry their mobile phones, whereas voters are not allowed, which is a violation of Constitutional Rights Under Article 14 of the Constitution.
The plea further stated that since voters are not allowed to carry their mobile phone inside the voting booths, it causes inconvenience to many and due to this, senior citizens, females or other individuals who have to go alone to polling booths, avoid voting.
The poll body had issued a notification on June 14, 2023, addressing the Chief Electoral Offices of All States and Union Territories, where it stated that no person other than the observers appointed by the commission and authorised election and police officials should be allowed to either carry or use mobile phones, wireless sets, within a 100-meter perimeter of the polling stations.
Yadav said in his petition that mobile phones had become “a sort of necessity” to communicate and for digitisation purposes now.
“Hence not allowing the mobile phone in polling booth and not allowing voter show soft copy of verified identification documents issued by Central/State Governments through Digi Locker Application approved and introduced by The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India, through National e- Governance Division, is violation of Rights of General Voters,” the plea said.
It further stated that according to data on the government’s website, over 321 million people use the Digi Locker application and over 7.76 billion documents are issued on Digi Locker by various government departments.