SC Rejects Plea Seeking Review Of VVPAT-EVM Verification Verdict

The Supreme Court has dismissed a petition seeking a review of its judgment that rejected the plea for 100 percent verification of Electronic Voting Machine votes with their Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail slips.

A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta dismissed the review petition, stating that no case for reviewing the April 26 judgment was made out. “We have carefully perused the review petition, as also the grounds in support thereof. In our opinion, no case for review of the judgement dated April 26, 2024 is made out. The review petition is, accordingly, dismissed,” the bench stated in its July 25 order.

The review petition, filed by Arun Kumar Agarwal, argued that there were mistakes and errors in the April 26 judgment. The petition contended, “It is not correct to state that the result will be unreasonably delayed (by tallying EVM votes with VVPAT slips) or the manpower required will be double of that already deployed… Existing CCTV surveillance of counting halls would ensure that manipulation and mischief do not occur in VVPAT slip counting.”

The petitioner sought a review of the April 26 judgment, which declined petitions for cross-verification by voters of votes cast by them, as “counted as recorded” in the EVMs with VVPAT. The review petition stated, “Electronic voting machines do not allow voters to verify that their votes have been accurately recorded. Furthermore, given their very nature, electronic voting machines are especially vulnerable to malicious changes by insiders such as designers, programmers, manufacturers, maintenance technicians, etc.”

“Therefore, in light of the above, there are apparent errors on the face of the impugned order dated April 26, 2024, and the impugned judgement is liable to be reviewed,” it added.

In its April 26 judgment, the Supreme Court also rejected the petitioners’ request to revert to the paper ballot voting system. The verdict addressed petitions seeking more extensive verification of EVM data against VVPAT records, filed by entities such as the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and Arun Kumar Agarwal, among others.