Election Commission Duty Bound To Make Polling Booths, ECI Website Accessible For Persons With Disabilities: Madras High Court

The Madras High Court has directed the Election Commission of India to respond to a plea seeking to ensure that all polling stations are accessible to persons with disabilities and all information provided through the websites of the ECI is also accessible to persons with disabilities. The bench of Chief Justice Manindra Mohan Shrivastava and Justice G Arul Murugan directed the ECI to file its counter within 4 weeks. The court orally remarked that since the polling booths were under the control of the ECI, they had a duty to ensure that it was accessible to all. The court also asked the ECI to take the issue and not merely consider it as a publicity petition. "You have issued guidelines. But they are saying that it's not enough. And we're taking it seriously because the association is itself of people with disabilities. They are the best people to talk about it. You shouldn't take it as adversarial litigation," the court said.The court also asked the ECI to ensure that physical accessibility, information accessibility, and transportation accessibility are provided to persons with disabilities. Asking ECI to respond, the court said that it would pass orders in the case, ensuring that the guidelines already put in place by the ECI were effectively implemented."You have to ensure. There's a statutory obligation on you. So you have to ensure that physical accessibility, information accessibility, transport accessibility etc are provided to them. Polling booths are under your control. So in that case, the duty is on them. These people have to be provided. Guidelines have to be issued in a proper manner. We'll issue effective directions in the case," the court orally remarked.The petitioner submitted that, as per Section 11 of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016, the ECI and the State Election Commissions should ensure that all polling stations are accessible to persons with disabilities and all materials related to the electoral process are easily understandable and accessible to them. It was further submitted that even after the enforcement of the legislation and repeated requests, neither the polling booths were accessible nor was the information available in the websites free from barriers. The petitioner pointed out that in the websites maintained by the ECI, only a single image based CAPTCHA verification was available instead of multi modal captcha's including audio, text, logic, OTP, etc. It was submitted that the ECI's websites were not in compliance with the mandatory Guideline for Indian Government Websites (GIGW) norms. The petitioner also submitted that even after legislature making it mandatory for polling booths to have ramp access, in reality, it was not available in the polling booths. Thus, the petitioner sought directions to ensure that the polling booths to be designated for the upcoming elections contain all facilities mentioned by the Commission itself in its document titled "Assured Minimum Facilities", to ensure that the design of the facility was in compliance with the specifications and space standards mandated by the Harmonised Guidelines and Standards for Universal Accessibility in India 2021. The petitioner thus submitted that the authorities had failed to comply with the mandate of Section 11 and had failed to ensure that all polling stations are accessible to persons with disabilities and all materials related to the electoral process are easily understandable and accessible by all. Case Title: Vaishnavi Jayakumar v The Election Commission of IndiaCase No: WP No. 34815 of 2025 Click Here To Read/Download The Order

Election Commission Duty Bound To Make Polling Booths, ECI Website Accessible For Persons With Disabilities: Madras High Court

Upasana Sajeev

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