The Supreme Court agreed on January 3 to list a set of petitions seeking directions to the Election Commission to verify the vote count in all electronic voting machines (EVMs) by counting all voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) slips, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections set to commence on April 19. At present, votes are verified by cross-checking votes cast in only five polling stations of each constituency against the VVPAT slips. Learn more about how EVMs work here.
The petitioners, one of whom is the Association for Democratic Reforms, refer to the reported judgement of the Supreme Court in Subramaniam Swamy vs Election Commission of India (2013), which states that the election process must have “fullest transparency in the system and to restore the confidence of the voters.” In the case, the Court held that a paper trail for votes was an “indispensable requirement of free and fair elections.” It directed the Election Commission to introduce VVPAT, a slip of paper that notes who the voter has voted for, in EVMs.
The petitioners argued that “it is the satisfaction and verification of the voter that is at the heart of electoral democracy and not just that of the EC, domain experts, political parties, or candidates.” One of the petitioners, activist Arun Kumar Agrawal, has also challenged a guideline issued by the EC which mandates sequential VVPAT verification, that is, one after the other, as causing undue delay. Simultaneous VVPAT verification is proposed instead, with more personnel being deployed for counting in every constituency. Noting that while the government spent about Rs. 5000 crore in the purchase of almost 24 lakh VVPATs, the petitioner highlighted that slips from only about 20,000 VVPATs were verified.
In a September 2023 affidavit to the Supreme Court, the EC said that there was “no fundamental right of the voter to verify through VVPATs that their votes were ‘recorded as cast’ and ‘counted as recorded.’” In the more than 450-page affidavit, the EC asserted that EVMS could neither be hacked nor tampered with, saying that they were “totally standalone machines having one-time programmable chips.”
The EC also said there was no need to “redesign” VVPATs, saying that the existing VVPAT “enables electors to check whether their votes have gone to the candidate of their choice… Further there is a provision for mandatory verification of printed VVPAT part slips of five randomly selected polling stations of each Assembly constituency/segment, which is the audit of the electronic vote before the results.” The EC has said that counting of all VVPAT slips would pose a “great difficulty.”
The problem may intensify if simultaneous elections are held-- the EC estimates that Rs. 10,000 crore will be needed every 15 years for new EVMs. A certain percentage of VVPAT machines, as well as Control units and ballot units are required as reserves to replace defective units at different stages. This would translate to 36,62,600 VVPATs, the Commission said in a letter to the Law Ministry in February last year. This would also translate to a huge personnel requirement.
The Bench, headed by Justice Sanjiv Khanna, assured senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Gopal Sankaranarayanan, and advocates Prashant Bhushan and Neha Rathi, representing different petitioners, that the case will be listed the week after next. The lawyers, in an oral mentioning, urged the court to hear the case before the election, even as soon as next week. Justice Khanna however said that they may not be able to hear it next week, “That is why we said the week after next.” The coming week only has Tuesday available for detailed hearing, with Monday and Wednesday reserved for miscellaneous cases, he noted. Thursday and Friday, meanwhile, are marked as gazetted and local holidays on the court’s calendar.
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