SC Refuses To Hear Early Plea Of ​​Cross-Verification Of EVMs With VVPAT By Voters

The Supreme Court on Wednesday adjourned the hearing on a plea by an NGO seeking cross-verification by voters of the votes cast by them through the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail till November.

A bench comprising of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and SVN Bhatti deferred the case, stating ‘no urgency’ in this.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the NGO, submitted that there is an urgency as elections are coming up.

The bench stated, “Mr Prashant Bhushan, how many times will this issue be raised? Every six months, this issue is freshly raised. There is no urgency in this. Let it come up in due course. Mr Prashant Bhushan prays for and is granted one week’s time to file a rejoinder affidavit. List in the month of November.”

On July 17, the top court sought the response of the Election Commission of India to a plea by the NGO.

Therefore, in the instant petition, NGO sought direction to the poll panel and Centre to ensure that the voters are able to verify through VVPATs that their vote has been “counted as recorded”.

It also sought to declare as unconstitutional the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961 and the practice and procedure of the Election Commission of India to the extent that they violate voter’s fundamental right to verify through VVPATs that their vote has been “recorded as cast” and “counted as recorded”.

The plea stated requirement of voters verifying that their votes have been “recorded as cast” is somewhat met when the VVPAT slip is displayed for about 7 seconds after pressing EVM button through a transparent window for the voters to verify that their vote has been recorded on the internally printed VVPAT slip before the slip falls into the ‘ballot box’.

The plea stated, “However, there is a complete vacuum in law as the ECI has provided no procedure for the voter to verify that her vote has been counted as recorded’ which is an indispensable part of voter verifiability. The failure of the ECI to provide for the same is in the teeth of purport and object of the directions issued by this Court in Subramanian Swamy versus Election Commission of India, (2013 verdict).”