Andhra Pradesh High Court to deliver verdict tomorrow on ECI's new postal ballot norms in State

The Andhra Pradesh High Court will at deliver its verdict tomorrow at 6 pm on the validity of relaxed norms to recognise counting of postal ballots in the State of Andhra Pradesh..A Bench of Justices Nyaypathy Vijay and Kiranmayee Mandava today reserved its judgment in the matter..The matter concerns validity of postal ballot votes cast in the State of Andhra Pradesh against which grievance has been raised by the YSR Congress party.The party has said that the Election Commission of India (ECI) relaxed the norms in the State. Specifically, the mandatory requirement of name and designation of the attesting officer to be mentioned in Form 13A as per the Rules has been dispensed with and now the specimen signatures of all such officers has instead been called for.The same has done for the sole purpose of validating postal ballots that do not adhere to the mandatory requirement of law, the petitioner stated today. .Senior Counsel Dr. Abhishek Manu Singhvi appeared for the YSR Congress today. He argued that the poll body has incorrectly done away with statutory norms. "ECI is issuing circulars contrary to rules and this is only for AP suggesting that so long as there is a signature by a polling officer, it is enough and no stamp, authentication etc is needed. The ECI circular has done away with authentication. Rules cannot be done away with. By removing a condition which lends legitimacy, you are weakening the electoral process", he said.Senior Advocate Avinash Desai appeared for the ECI argued that the relaxed rules do not apply to all postal ballots. "These are only voters on election duty voting at the facilitation centres ... These are pre verified attestation officers. There is no malafide. What we are doing is that voters on election duty are not disenfranchised and that they get the right to caste a vote," he said.