On April 10, advocate Niranjan Rajagopalan who appeared for ECI, told the Court that the ECI never received any request for postal ballot from Southern Railway since the Railway authorities had mistakenly made such request to the Chennai collector instead of the ECI.
He told the Court that the secretary to the Principal Chief Personnel Officer of Southern Railway had written to the Chennai Collector on February 20 requesting the extension of postal ballot facility for its employees. It had never made any request to ECI and therefore, the postal ballot facility has not been made available for SR in the upcoming elections though it would be available for organisations such as BSNL, Chennai Metro Rail, Bureau of Civil Aviation Security and State government employees.
The ECI further said it was not possible now to extend such facilities to SR employees as the postal ballots had already been printed and the last date for individual electors to submit their requisition had expired on March 25. Further, the process of casting postal votes has already begun, the ECI said.
Source: Barandbench
