The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and its candidate for the civic body elections from Nehru Vihar ward, Mohd. Tahir Hussain, on Tuesday came to the Delhi High Court praying that the State Election Commission (SEC) be directed to use Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) enabled generation 2 and 3 EVM machines for the upcoming polls.
The matter was mentioned for urgent hearing and was listed to be heard by Justice A.K Pathak, who asked why the petition was being filed at the eleventh hour.
No immediate relief
While refusing to grant any immediate relief saying “nothing can be done at this eleventh hour”, Justice Pathak directed the Election Commission and also the three municipal corporations which have been made a party to file their response by Friday.
During the hearing, the AAP said “the decision to conduct the 2017 civic polls using generation-1 EVMs is wholly illegal, arbitrary, perverse, whimsical and amounts to colourable exercise of power”.
Appearing for the petitioners, senior advocate Indira Jaisingh said: “We are not asking for postponement of elections. We are asking the State Election Commission to use the Generation-2 EVMs, which are also called VVPAT machines, to ensure free and fair elections.”
‘Frauds detected’
She also relied on the April 14 response of SEC to a letter written by Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia wherein the Commission had said that the availability of generation- 2 EVMs is limited and only generation-1 EVMs are provided to SEC on loan basis. She also said the demand for machines is fulfilled by Rajasthan, “which is precisely the place where all the frauds were detected”.
The Bench, however, objected saying AAP and its candidate “cannot rely on response to a letter written by someone [Mr. Sisodia]. The person who wrote the letter is not before this court”. Ms. Jaisingh also said that with no other election taking place in the country, 13,000 generation-2 EVMs are available with the Election Commission with 2,000 machines on standby and can be used in the municipal polls.
“You cannot say the machines are available. It has to come from their [SEC] mouth,” said Justice Pathak.
To this, Ms. Jaisingh said, “But what if they have decided to keep their mouth shut?”
SEC counsel Summet Pushkarna vehemently opposed the petition saying, “The election is scheduled for just four days from today and the party in power in Delhi has chosen to come to the court now”.
“The same machines were used in the Assembly elections in which this party was voted to power and today, based on some speculative reports in the media, they are challenging the use of the same machines in municipal polls,” Mr. Pushkarna argued. He also doubted the “extraordinary urgency” shown by the party in coming with the petition.
The party relied on a Supreme Court judgment to say that paper trail is an indispensable requirement of free and fair elections while highlighting a recent incident where allegedly no matter which button a voter pressed, the vote went to the BJP.
