The Supreme Court has decided to hear a plea on Monday, i.e., October 31 that sought direction to the Election Commission to remove symbols from ballot and EVMs and replace it with ‘name, age, educational qualification and photograph’ of candidates.
A bench headed by Chief Justice of India UU Lalit will hear the case on Monday. The plea filed by advocate Ashwini Upadhyay sought direction to declare the use of party symbol on EVM as illegal-unconstitutional and violative of Articles 14, 15, and 21 of the Constitution of India.
The petition stated that the best solution to weed out corruption and criminalisation in politics is to replace the symbols of a political party on the ballot and EVM with the name, age, educational qualification and photograph of the candidates.
“Direct the Election Commission of India to use the ‘name, age, educational qualification and photograph’ of the candidates on EVM, in order to provide equal opportunity to contesting candidates and to weed out corruption criminalisation, casteism, communalism regionalism, linguism and nepotism,” the plea stated.
It said that ballot and EVM without political party symbol have many benefits as it will help electors to vote and support intelligent diligent and honest candidates.