New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday rejected all the pleas seeking a full count of all voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) slips generated during elections held on electronic voting machines.
The bench comprised Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta, and both judges wrote separate but concurring judgments. “We have elaborately discussed the protocols, technical aspects,” Justice Khanna said, according to Livelaw. “We have rejected all the pleas.”
The pleas rejected included those for paper ballot voting, complete EVM-VVPAT verification and physical deposit of VVPAT slips. The court also issued two directions, according to Justice Khanna:
1. One direction is after the completion of symbol loading process, the Symbol Loading Unit should be sealed. The SLU should be stored at least for a period of 45 days.
2. The burnt memory semicontroller in 5% of the EVMs that is the Control Unit, Ballot Unit and the VVPAT per assembly constituency per parliamentary constituency shall be checked and verified by a team of engineers from the manufacturers of the EVM post the announcement of results on a written request by candidates 2 and 3. Such a request to be made within 7 days of the declaration of the results. The actual cost to be borne by the candidate making the request. Expenses to be refunded in case the EVMs are found to be tampered.
Justice Datta added that blindly distrusting a system can lead to unwarranted skepticism. “Instead, a critical yet constructive approach guided by evidence and reason should be followed…to ensure the system’s credibility and effectiveness”.
The writ petitions had been filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), Abhay Bhakchand Chhajed and Arun Kumar Aggarwal. The petitioners had argued that a complete VVPAT count would go a long way in increasing citizens’ confidence in the electoral process. It was a small price to pay to wait a few days for the final results, they argued.
VVPAT machines let voters see a paper slip that is printed within the machine for a period of seven seconds, displaying the name and the symbol of the selected candidate.
It then drops the paper into a sealed box within the machine.
According to Supreme Court guidelines, the ECI verifies VVPAT slips in five randomly selected polling stations in each assembly constituency.
Earlier during the hearing, the court had warned against releasing the source code for EVMs, saying it could be misused. As The Wire reported, this stand is contradictory to what the Election Commission of India has been saying time and again that the machines are 100% tamper-proof and cannot be hacked.
On April 16, the top court had deprecated criticism of EVMs and calls for reverting to ballot papers, saying the electoral process in India is a “humongous task” and attempts should not be made to “bring down the system”.
