The Supreme Court has asked the Election Commission of India to respond to a plea demanding that counts from electronic voting machines and voter-verifiable paper audit trail units should be tallied with each other. Currently, only around 2% of EVM counts are matched with VVPAT. The court stated that the ECI must take into account factors such as manpower in deciding the number of matches needed. Similar petitions have been pending since 2019 and will be taken up together in the next hearing.
The Supreme Court on Monday asked the Election Commission of India (ECI) to respond to a plea by the NGO Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), demanding that counts from electronic voting machines (EVMs) and voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) units should be tallied with each other, even as it observed that the poll body must be working to make the system impervious.
At present, around 2% of EVMs’ counts are matched with VVPAT.
“You are being oversuspicious. We are certain they are already working on this system. In previous litigation, the commission said that they are working on it,” a bench of justices Sanjiv Khanna and Bela M Trivedi told ADR’s lawyer Prashant Bhushan.
While Bhushan argued that less than 2% of EVMs are matched with VVPAT, the Court said that ECI has to also take into account several other factors, including the requirement of manpower, in taking a call on the numbers they need to match.
“Mismatch (between EVMs, VVPAT and register entries at a polling booth) could happen because of a mix of factors. There are times when people sign in to the register and enter the poll booths but do not press EVM. There could be similar other reasons...We think you are being over suspicious here,” said the bench.
Responding, Bhushan said that although he also believes that EVMs cannot be tampered with or hacked, there are certain procedural changes required to accord more credibility to the system. “We want VVPAT to be tallied with EVMs so that there are no discrepancies,” he added.
To this, the bench said that it is not inclined to put ECI on ‘notice’ but would rather want the poll body to elucidate the steps it has taken to improve the system.
“Let a copy of this petition be served on the standing counsel of the election commission. We will give them three weeks to examine it. We think they will have their answers ready,” added the Court.
The Court in its brief order further recorded that similar petitions are pending since 2019 and that all these pleas may be taken up together on the next date of hearing.
In December 2019, the top court had asked ECI to respond to a petition filed by ADR and another NGO, Common Cause, seeking a probe into alleged discrepancies between voter turnout and the number of votes counted in 347 constituencies in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. This plea sought directions to the ECI to formulate a robust procedure to investigate discrepancies in the data in all future elections.
Another plea by Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra was also entertained by the apex court in December 2019. In her plea, Moitra asked for mandatory publication of final election results and vote shares within 48 hours instead of the current practice of belated disclosures.
She pointed out that quick disclosures will establish the accuracy of election results. Moitra, at that time, claimed that the poll panel had since 2004 been publishing the final results within 48 hours but discontinued the practice for the 2019 parliamentary elections without citing any reason.
The NGO ADR had previously claimed that the ECI has provided no procedure for the voter to verify that her vote has been ‘counted as recorded’.
It demanded appropriate changes in the VVPAT mechanism stating it is the fundamental right of every voter to verify that their vote has been ‘recorded as cast’ and ‘counted as recorded’.