The Supreme Court on Monday asked the Election Commission to explain its decision to increase the maximum number of voters per polling station from 1,200 to 1,500, saying that it does not want electors to be inconvenienced by the move, reported Live Law.

The bench of Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar was hearing a public interest litigation challenging the poll panel’s communications issued in August allowing the maximum number of voters per polling station to be increased.

In the previous hearing, advocate Abhishek Singhvi, appearing for the petitioner, argued that the move would create challenges for electors and amounted to an act of voter disenfranchisement, Live Law reported.

The Election Commission’s decision could lead to the exclusion of underprivileged groups from the polling process as they may not be able to carve out the spare disproportionate time from their daily schedules to cast their ballots, Singhvi had argued.

Singhvi also cited newspaper reports as evidence that voters could be discouraged from casting their vote if queues at polling stations were inordinately long.

The petitioner argued that the Commission’s decision was not supported by data.

There has been no Census since 2011 and therefore, there is no fresh data to guide the panel’s decision, the petitioner pointed out. “By increasing this limit [voters per polling station], the [Election Commission] has compromised the operational efficiency of polling stations, potentially leading to longer waiting times, overcrowding and voter fatigue,” Live Law quoted the petitioner as saying.

The petitioner said that there must be a proportional expansion in the number of polling booths to accommodate the growing number of voters.

At the hearing on Monday, lawyer Maninder Singh, representing the poll panel, said that polling stations have been accommodating increases in the number of voters since 2019 and that all political parties had been consulted before the decision was taken, according to Live Law.

The bench asked the Election Commission to file a response within three weeks explaining why it had taken the decision.

The matter will be heard next in January.