The top court issued the notice and termed the VVPAT plea with pending cases on the issue.
New Delhi:
In a significant development, the Supreme Court on Monday sought replies from the Election Commission and the Center on a plea seeking complete counting of VVPAT slips in polls, as against the current practice of verification of only five randomly selected EVMs through paper VVPAT slips.
The Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) is an independent vote verification system that allows a voter to see if their vote was cast correctly.
The VVPAT generates a paper slip that can be viewed by the voter and the slip is kept in a sealed cover and can be opened in case of a dispute.
The top court had on April 8, 2019, ordered the poll panel to increase the number of EVMs undergoing physical VVPAT verification from one to five per assembly segment in a parliamentary constituency.
A bench comprising Justices BR Gavai and Sandeep Mehta noted the submissions of lawyers representing activist Arun Kumar Agrawal seeking a complete count of VVPAT slips in elections as against verification of only five randomly selected EVMs through paper VVPAT slips.
It has issued notices to the Election Commission (EC) and the Central government on the plea, which may be heard on May 17.
Senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan and advocate Neha Rathi appeared for Agrawal.
The plea attacked the EC’s directive that requires VVPAT verification to be carried out consecutively, one after the other.
The plea said that if simultaneous verification is carried out and more officers are deployed for counting in each assembly constituency, the entire VVPAT verification can be carried out within five to six hours.
The government has spent nearly Rs 5,000 crore on purchasing nearly 24 lakh VVPATs, but currently the VVPAT slips of only around 20,000 VVPATs have been verified, the report said.
Considering that experts are raising many questions regarding VVPATs and EVMs and the fact that a large number of discrepancies between EVM and VVPAT vote counting have been reported in the past, it is imperative that all VVPAT slips are counted and that a voter is being checked. be given an opportunity to duly verify that his vote as cast in the ballot paper is also counted by allowing him to physically drop his/her VVPAT slip into the ballot box, the plea said.
The top court issued the notice and labeled it with pending cases on the issue.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by WhatsNew2Day staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)