New Delhi

The Supreme Court on Monday issued notices to the Centre and the Election Commission on a petition seeking the introduction of fingerprint and iris-based biometric verification at polling booths to curb duplicate voting.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi clarified that the request could not be implemented for the ongoing Assembly elections in certain states.

The bench observed that the proposal could instead be examined for future parliamentary or state assembly elections and directed that notices be issued on the matter.

The court sought responses from the Union government, the Election Commission and several state governments on the petition filed by advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay.

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The plea argued that large-scale harm is caused to citizens because bribery, undue influence, impersonation, duplicate voting and ghost voting continue to affect the fairness and integrity of the electoral process.