The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined a request to urgently list and hear a plea to verify Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips with Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) before the counting of votes.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) informed the court that the directions in an April 2019 judgment were already being followed as regards the verification. The poll body said officials have also been trained to count the votes accordingly.
The court’s refusal comes 48 hours before counting is scheduled on March 10 for the Assembly polls held in five States.
The ECI was referring to a 2019 verdict of the top court which had directed the poll body to increase the physical counting of VVPAT slips to five random Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in each Assembly segment/constituency.
Earlier, only the VVPAT slips from one EVM in every Assembly segment/constituency was subjected to physical verification. Scrutiny of votes polled through five EVMs was enough to ensure that an election was “fool-proof”, the court had concluded in its April verdict. The physical scrutiny of the slips in five EVMs had increased the VVPAT verification percentage from .44% to less than 2%.
The Supreme Court’s decision, in 2019, was based on petitions filed by 21 Opposition parties, led by former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, which had urged for 50% random physical verification of EVMs using VVPAT. The court had subsequently declined a review of its judgment too.
On Tuesday, a Bench led by Chief Justice N.V. Ramana acknowledged the submission made by the ECI, represented by senior advocate Maninder Singh.
“We are not interfering. Let the counting go on as per established practice, procedures and law. The Election Commission is following the judgment. They have made a statement,” the top court addressed senior advocate Meenaskhi Arora, appearing for Rakesh Kumar, who had sought an urgent listing of the petition.
Ms. Arora had also sought VVPAT verification at the start of the counting against the present practice of doing it at the end.
