NEW DELHI: New Delhi: Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi’s insistence that the Election Commission share a machine-readable, digital copy of the Maharashtra electoral roll, appears to have overlooked an important aspect: a similar prayer made by senior Congress leader Kamal Nath before the Supreme Court was rejected way back in 2018.Interestingly, arguing the case on behalf of the petitioner was none other than Abhishek Manu Singhvi, now member of the Congress’s Empowered Action Group of Leaders and Experts (EAGLE) that monitors the conduct of elections in the country.A two-judge Supreme Court Bench had, in its ruling dated October 12, 2018 in the case Kamal Nath Vs ECI and Others, held that it “finds force in the submission of ECI (that) Clause 11.2.2.2 of the election manual only uses the expression “text mode”. As per the clause, the draft roll must be put on the concerned chief electoral officer’s (CEO’s) website in a text mode and no photographs shall appear against the elector’s details.The Bench explained that a draft roll in text mode was already supplied to the petitioner ahead of the 2018 polls in Madhya Pradesh. Clause 11.2.2.2 “nowhere says that the draft electoral roll has to be put up on the CEO’s website in a ‘searchable PDF’. Therefore, the petitioner cannot claim, as a right, that the draft electoral roll should be placed on the website in a ‘searchable mode’. It has only to be in ‘text mode’ and it is so provided,” ruled the SC Bench comprising Justice A K Sikri and Justice Ashok Bhushan. It also cited “issues of privacy of voters” as EC’s reasons for not providing the draft electoral roll in a searchable PDF format.“ECI has directed its field level functionaries to put only the ‘Image PDF’ of electoral roll in the public domain. We are, therefore, of the opinion that the format in which the draft electoral roll is supplied to the petitioner fulfils the requirement contained in the election manual….If the petitioner so wants, he can always convert it into searchable mode which, of course, would require him to put his own efforts,” the Bench stated.EC officials on Thursday cited this 2018 verdict to underline that the Congress’s demand for “searchable or machine-readable rolls” is not new and forms part of its strategy for well over eight years, a fact that appears to have been selectively obscured in the present representation. “The demand reiterated by Gandhi, albeit consistent with the position historically maintained by the Congress, is not tenable within the contours of the prevailing legal framework…this very issue has already been agitated by the Congress party before the highest court of the country,” said an EC functionary“It appears that Gandhi may not have been appropriately apprised of the finality with which the matter stands concluded in judicial record,” the functionary noted.