The Crossbill News Desk
The Supreme Court on Tuesday (April 16) posted the proceedings of the petition seeking 100 per cent verification of Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) against Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) records, on April 18 for further hearing. Incidentally the first phase of voting of the 18th Lok Sabha begins on 19th April, virtually bringing an end to 'replace EVM with ballot' movement before the polls.
The bench comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta heard the plea filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) among others, for over two hours.
The bench said that the matter was considered by the Court in 2019. At that time when the Court had ordered to increase the count of VVPATs from one EVM to 5 EVMs per assembly segment in a constituency.
Responding to the court’s observation, senior advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for ADR, said that the Court passed the said order in view of the paucity of the time ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and that the issue was still open for adjudication.
Live Law reported that Bhushan argued that EVMs and VVPATs have programmable chips and malicious programs can be inserted into them. When the bench asked him for alternatives that are being sought, Bhushan gave three options:
1. Going back to the paper ballot system
2. Allow the voter to physically take the VVPAT slip, deposit it in the ballot box and count the slips
3. Make the glass transparent and count all the VVPAT slips.
Bhushan said that presently, the glass is opaque and the voter can see it only when a light bulb turns on inside for about 7 seconds displaying the slip for the voter. However, the voter can't see the slip being cut and falling down, he said. If there is a mismatch between VVPAT and EVM, they only let VVPAT count prevail in that polling station, Bhushan suggested as quoted by Live Law
Earlier, it may be recalled that the Election Commission of India (ECI) had stated that implementation of the petition filed by ADR, i.e complete verification of EVM against VVPAT is practically difficult. A bench led by Justice Sanjiv Khanna, while hearing ADR's petition, had expressed reservations about the demand, saying that it would add to the ECI's burden without much significant advantage.
The bench comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta heard the plea filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) among others, for over two hours.
The bench said that the matter was considered by the Court in 2019. At that time when the Court had ordered to increase the count of VVPATs from one EVM to 5 EVMs per assembly segment in a constituency.
Responding to the court’s observation, senior advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for ADR, said that the Court passed the said order in view of the paucity of the time ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and that the issue was still open for adjudication.
Live Law reported that Bhushan argued that EVMs and VVPATs have programmable chips and malicious programs can be inserted into them. When the bench asked him for alternatives that are being sought, Bhushan gave three options:
1. Going back to the paper ballot system
2. Allow the voter to physically take the VVPAT slip, deposit it in the ballot box and count the slips
3. Make the glass transparent and count all the VVPAT slips.
Bhushan said that presently, the glass is opaque and the voter can see it only when a light bulb turns on inside for about 7 seconds displaying the slip for the voter. However, the voter can't see the slip being cut and falling down, he said. If there is a mismatch between VVPAT and EVM, they only let VVPAT count prevail in that polling station, Bhushan suggested as quoted by Live Law
Earlier, it may be recalled that the Election Commission of India (ECI) had stated that implementation of the petition filed by ADR, i.e complete verification of EVM against VVPAT is practically difficult. A bench led by Justice Sanjiv Khanna, while hearing ADR's petition, had expressed reservations about the demand, saying that it would add to the ECI's burden without much significant advantage.
Comments (0)
Leave a Comment