The Supreme Court on Monday asked the Election Commission to respond to a series of writ petitions seeking that ward-wise declaration of poll results should be replaced with a system of cluster counting, Live Law reported.

The petitioners, one of who is Bharatiya Janata Party leader Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, had said that votes in several booths should be counted together. This prevents the voting pattern in any particular booth from being exposed that leaves voters vulnerable to intimidation by candidates they rejected.

Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, appearing for Upadhyay, said the “totaliser” – a mechanism installed in voting machines to hide booth-wise voting patterns – could be allowed under Rule 59A of the Conduct of Election Rules of 1961. The rule states that the Election Commission can specify constituencies in which it feels that electors are being intimated, and where it feels ballot papers must be mixed before counting of votes.

However, Additional Solicitor General Maninder Singh, appearing for the government, said there was a risk of “outflow of data from the electronic voting machine” before it is opened if a totaliser is used. He added that the provisions of Rule 59A were to be used only in constituencies where the Election Commission believed it would be unfit to undertake booth-wise counting.