The Supreme Court on Friday asked the Election Commission of India (ECI) to respond to a plea seeking disclosure of final authenticated data of voter turnout in all polling stations including the number of votes polled in the Lok Sabha Elections 2024 within 48 hours of the polling.

A Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra asked the ECI counsel, Amit Sharma ,what the difficulty was in putting up the voter turn out details on its website.

"Mr. Sharma what is the difficulty to put it on the website," CJI Chandrachud asked.

"It takes time. We have to collect a lot of data," the ECI counsel said.

"But every polling officer submits data on the app by evening ? So returning officer has data of full constituency by the end of the day," the Bench asked.

"Not immediately," the ECI counsel responded.

"Okay, the next day," the CJI replied.

The Court eventually directed the ECI to file its reply within a week, and posted the case for consideration next on May 24.

The application was filed in light of the recent controversy surrounding the substantial increase in the final voter turn out announced by the ECI for the first two phases of the ongoing Lok Sabha elections as compared to initial estimate announced on the voting day.

The application highlighted that the data published on April 30 showed a sharp increase (by about 5-6%) of final voter turn out as compared to the initial percentages announced by ECI on the day of polling.