Supreme Court to deliver verdict tomorrow on petitions seeking 100% EVM-VVPAT verification

There will be two decisions in the EVM-VVPAT case – one by Justice Sanjeev Khanna and the other by Justice Dipankar Dutta.

On April 18, the Supreme Court had reserved its verdict on the petitions filed by the Association for Democratic Rights (ADR) and others. The court listed the petitions again on April 24 to seek some technical clarifications from the Election Commission of India (ECI).

During the hearing, the bench had extensive interactions with an Election Commission official to understand the functioning of EVMs and VVPATs and their security features. live law informed of.

What was sought in the petitions?

Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) is one of the petitioners seeking to reverse the Election Commission’s 2017 decision to replace the transparent glass on VVPAT machines with opaque glass, through which a voter can see the slip only when When the lights are on. Seven seconds.

The ADR sought to match the count in the EVMs with the votes that have been verifiably “recorded as cast” and to ensure that the voter is able to verify through the VVPAT slip that his The vote, as recorded on the paper slip, is “counted as recorded”.

What has SC said so far?

As reported by Live Law, the Election Commission said that EVMs cannot be tampered with under any circumstances and complete counting of VVPAT slips is not practically possible.

During the hearing, Supreme Court Justice Dutta told lawyer Prashant Bhushan that no incident of malicious program being loaded with Prateek has come to light. Justice Dutta questioned, “Can any candidate show if there is any mismatch in the 5 per cent VVPATs counted?”

“There is no report of any such incident (malicious program loading with Pratik) till date. Justice Dutta said, we cannot control elections Mr. Bhushan, we cannot control any other constitutional authority.

“If there is scope for improvement, we can certainly enhance it,” Justice Khanna assured. The courts intervened twice: first, when we mandated the use of VVPAT, and second, when we made the verification one by one. Increased it to five percent.”

The Supreme Court had earlier also emphasized that whenever suggestions were sought to enhance the voting process, the arguments continuously advocated the return of ballot papers.

Milestone alert!
Livemint tops charts as fastest growing news website in the world Click here to find out more.

Unlock a world of benefits! From informative newsletters to real-time stock tracking, breaking news and personalized newsfeeds – it’s all here, just a click away! log in now!

Published: April 25, 2024, 09:21 PM IST