The Samajwadi Party on Wednesday asked the Election Commission to set up webcasts for all polling stations during the upcoming bye-election in Uttar Pradesh’s Milkipur Assembly constituency.

The bye-poll was necessitated after Samajwadi Party’s Awadhesh Prasad resigned as the MLA after being elected to the Lok Sabha in June. His son is the party’s candidate from the constituency.

The voting will be held on February 5 and the counting of votes will take place on February 8.

On Wednesday, the Samajwadi Party submitted a memorandum to the state chief electoral officer seeking a webcast for all 414 polling stations in the Milkipur constituency on polling day.

It added that the link of the webcast should be shared with all poll candidates and recognised political parties to enable them to monitor the voting process and ensure “free, transparent and fearless elections”.

The Akhilesh Yadav-led party has repeatedly said that it does not find the Electronic Voting Machines trustworthy.

In December, the Samajwadi Party submitted a memorandum to the poll panel, seeking the release of security camera footage and video recordings from polling booths in seven Assembly constituencies where bye-elections were held a month earlier. The party had lost all seven seat in the bye-polls held on November 13.

The memorandum in December came days after the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government amended the 1961 Conduct of Elections Rules, restricting public access to poll-related documents on December 20, as first reported by Scroll.

Rule 93(2)(a) of the Conduct of Election Rules said that “all other papers relating to the election shall be open to public inspection”.

The amended rule said: “All other papers as specified in these rules relating to the election shall be open to public inspection.”

With this change notified by the Union Ministry of Law and Justice in consultation with the Election Commission, not all poll-related documents, including security camera and webcasting footage as well as video recordings of candidates, can be inspected by the public.

Only those documents specified in the Conduct of Election Rules can be inspected by the public.

Subsequently, the Congress said it had challenged the amendment in the Supreme Court.