The Supreme Court on Monday said it was in favour of increasing random physical verification of Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) in parliamentary and Assembly polls, even as the idea was met with stiff resistance from the Election Commission of India.
Deputy Election Commissioner Sudeep Jain said the current practice of physically checking the VVPAT paper slips of one randomly selected polling station in an Assembly constituency and each Assembly segment in case of Lok Sabha election was “all that is needed”. There was no need whatsoever to extend the physical count of VVPATs, he said.
Mr. Jain told a Bench comprising Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Deepak Gupta that VVPATs were “working absolutely right” and everything that the Election Commission of India (ECI) does was based on expert statistical data. He said the Commission, on its own, constantly betters its parameters.
A visibly annoyed Chief Justice Gogoi replied to Mr. Jain’s comments in court, asking him why the Election Commission had not introduced VVPATs on its own after introspecting on its parameters.
“It was the judges of this court that pushed you into introducing the VVPATs in the first place. If you are so conscious of improving your parameters, why did you not take the first step to introduce VVPATs in elections. Why did the judges of this court have to think for you?” Chief Justice Gogoi asked the Election Commission.
Question of satisfaction
In 2013, the Supreme Court held in the Dr. Subramanian Swamy case that paper trail through VVPAT of votes cast was an indispensable requirement of free and fair elections.
“You (Mr. Jain) may not have been in the Election Commission at the time, but do you know how much of opposition the Supreme Court had to face from the Election Commission to bring in VVPATs?” Chief Justice Gogoi asked.
The Chief Justice said “no institution, however high, including the judiciary, should insulate itself from improvements”.
“We are only asking you to do a little more for the sake of purity of the elections… We would like you to increase the physical counting. This is not about casting aspersions on you, but this is a question of satisfaction… Anyway, two is better than one, is it not? So, can you do it on your own or do you have any difficulty to do so?” the CJI asked Mr. Jain again.
The court finally directed the Election Commission to file an affidavit by Thursday, explaining why it seemed to be so “fully satisfied” about restricting physical counting of VVPATs to one polling station. The affidavit should also indicate the logistics and time required in case the sample verification of VVPATs was extended to more than one polling station.
The court was hearing a joint petition filed by 21 Opposition parties demanding the random verification of at least 50 percent EVMs-VVPATs in every Assembly segment or constituency.
The Opposition sought to quash an Election Commission guideline that physical counting should be conducted “only for VVPAT paper slips of one randomly selected polling station of an Assembly constituency in case of election to State Legislative Assembly and each Assembly segment in case of election to the House of the People”.
The petition has been filed in the names of Andhra chief minister and Telegu Desam Party leader N. Chandrababu Naidu, Nationalist Congress Party leader Sharad Pawar, Indian National Congress K.C. Venugopal, All India Trinamool Congress Derek O’Brien, Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav, DMK leader Stalin, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, National Congress leader Farooq Abdullah, Loktantrik Janta Dal leader Sharad Yadav, Rashtriya Janta Dal leader Manoj Jha, among others.
