The Madras High Court on Wednesday took serious note of a complaint that the Puducherry unit of the BJP had accessed voters’ phone numbers linked to their Aadhaar cards and had been misusing the data for electioneering. It directed the Election Commission of India to file a report by Friday on the steps taken by it to prevent such acts.
Passing interim orders on a public interest litigation petition filed by A. Anand, president of the Puducherry State committee of the Democratic Youth Federation of India, Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy wrote: “A matter of serious concern has been reported by the petitioner that a prominent political party apparently has access to personal records of citizens to undertake a political campaign.”
On ECI counsel Niranjan Rajagopalan’s submission that it had forwarded the petitioner’s complaint to the cybercrime cell, the Bench said: “It will not do for the Election Commission to pass the buck in this case and say the cybercrime division is conducting an investigation. When the Commission is up and about in all other matters and asserts its primacy and authority, it has to look into this allegation immediately and with the degree of seriousness that it deserves.”
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In his affidavit, Mr. Anand, a law graduate, said voters in Puducherry, Mahe and Yanam had been receiving messages on their mobile phones with a link to an invitation for joining booth-level WhatsApp groups created by the BJP.
He feared the party might use the mobile phone numbers even to bribe voters.