SC Seeks Election Commission’s Response on Cross-Verification of Votes with VVPAT

The Supreme Court on Monday directed the Election Commission of India (ECI) to respond to a plea by an NGO seeking cross-verification of votes cast by voters with the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) to ensure they are “counted as recorded” in the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).

A bench comprising Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Bela M Trivedi clarified that it is not issuing a notice to the Election Commission but only seeking a copy of the petition filed by the NGO, Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), to be served to the standing counsel of the poll panel.

The bench then directed the Election Commission to file its reply within three weeks.

“We think that it appears to be a case of over suspicion. We sometimes tend to be overly suspicious on certain matters. We are sure that they (EC) might have taken steps to rectify any such problems, if they existed. Therefore, we are not issuing notice and only asking for the copy to be served,” the bench told advocate Prashant Bhushan, who appeared for the NGO.

Advocate Bhushan acknowledged the tendency to be “over suspicious” regarding EVM hacking but argued that there are other ways in which voting machines can be manipulated.

He requested the court to tag the present plea with a similar petition that had received a notice in 2019, and the bench granted his request.

In the current petition, the NGO sought directions to the Election Commission and the central government to ensure that voters can verify through VVPATs that their vote has been “counted as recorded.”

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

The plea highlighted that while the requirement for voters to verify that their votes have been “recorded as cast” is somewhat fulfilled through the display of the VVPAT slip for seven seconds after pressing the button on the EVM, there is a lack of procedure for voters to verify that their vote has been “counted as recorded.” The plea argued that this omission contradicts the directions issued by the Supreme Court in the 2013 verdict of Subramanian Swamy versus Election Commission of India.