The Supreme Court on Wednesday pulled up the Election Commission of India (ECI) after the poll body said it could not trace the video recording of the 2023 vote count in Karnataka’s Sringeri assembly constituency.
Since December 2024, norms over who may inspect recordings and cut how long ECI keeps them have been narrowed. Until 2025, the ECI’s retention periods depended on the stage of the election. The commission says that under the Representation of the People Act, 1951, a result can be challenged in court only within 45 days of the winner being declared, and this is why it keeps footage for the same period. Rule 93 of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, governs who can inspect election records. Before December 2024, Rule 93(2)(a) said: “All other papers relating to the election shall be open to public inspection.
This is not the first time the ECI has faced questions over election footage. Footage: – Of the campaign for six months The rule does not apply to an election that faces a legal challenge. In such cases, the footage is not to be destroyed. Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar has also cited voters’ privacy as a reason not to make recordings public. In practice, candidates, parties and citizens relied on this wording to seek material the rules did not explicitly name, including video recordings.
Footage kept longer, it says, could be misused.
