SC rejects all petitions seeking 100% verification of EVM votes with their VVPAT slips

The Supreme Court today rejected petitions seeking 100% verification of votes cast on Electronic Voting Machines with paper slips generated through the VVPAT method. The Supreme Court, however, passed two directions for the Election Commission.

The Supreme Court on Friday rejected petitions seeking 100% verification of votes cast on Electronic Voting Machines with paper slips generated through the VVPAT method. A unanimous decision was given by the two-judge panel consisting of Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Dipankar Datta.

"While balanced perspective is important, blindly doubting a system can breed scepticism and thus, meaningful criticism is needed, be it judiciary, legislature etc. Democracy is all about maintaining harmony and trust among all the pillars. By nurturing a culture of trust and collaboration, we can strengthen the voice of our democracy," Justice Datta said in the judgment.

Significantly, the Court had earlier reserved its judgement on the petitions for April 18 after two days of hearing. However, it had again listed the matter for discussion on April 24 to understand the workings of the EVMs with the ECI.

Nonetheless, the Election Commission received two orders from the Supreme Court.  The Court said it has given two directions — one direction is after the completion of symbol loading process, the Symbol Loading Unit (SLU) should be sealed and they should be stored at least for 45 days.

Second direction issued by Supreme Court is that there will be option for candidates to get the microcontroller program of EVMs to be checked by a team of engineers after the declaration of results, such a request is to be made by the candidate within seven days after the declaration of results.

Earlier, during the hearing, the bench sought answers to certain technical queries linked to the functioning of EVMs, including whether the microcontrollers fitted in them are reprogrammable. On the security feature, the ECI asserted that the EVMs cannot be tampered with in any circumstance and that the complete counting of the VVPAT slips was not practically possible.