VVPAT-verification case: SC says EC cleared doubts, can't control elections

The Supreme Court on Wednesday reserved the order for petitions seeking the complete verification of votes cast using Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT), saying "we don't control the elections, the poll body has cleared doubts".

A two-judge bench of the Supreme Court comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Dattahad sought clarification from an official of the poll panel to five questions related to the functioning of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), including whether the microcontrollers fitted in them are reprogrammable.

"We have some doubts and need clarification and that's why we have listed the matter for directions," the bench said, adding "we don't want to be factually wrong but doubly sure in our findings". 

The Election Commission clarified that the EVMs cannot be tampered with under any circumstance and that the complete counting of the VVPAT slips was not practically feasible.

After EC’s clarification, the court said, “"We cannot control the elections, we cannot control the functioning of another constitutional authority.”

A lawyer appearing for one of the petitioners, said that source code of EVMs should also be disclosed for transparency, to which Justice Khanna replied, “The source code should never be disclosed. If it is disclosed, it will be misused. It should never be disclosed.”

Currently, VVPAT verification is done only in five randomly selected EVMs in each Assembly segment of a parliamentary constituency.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court had issued a notice to EC on a petition seeking the counting of all VVPAT paper slips in elections, instead of verifying only the five randomly selected EVMs.

The court while responding to Advocate Prashant Bhushan’s concerns, who appeared for petitioner Association for Democratic Reforms, said, “If you are predisposed about a thought-process, then we cannot help you... we are not here to change your thought process.”

The petition challenged the Election Commission's guidelines that mandate that VVPAT verification shall be done sequentially, that is one after the other, thereby causing undue delay.

The petition argued that if simultaneous verification was done and an additional number of officers were deployed for counting in each Assembly constituency, then complete VVPAT verification could be done in just five to six hours.

During a hearing on April 18, the Election Commission underlined that all EVMs undergo mock drills before being deployed for elections and that candidates are allowed to randomly pick up 5 per cent of the machines.

The ECI said that the process is repeated on the voting day. The court has reserved its judgement on the matter for now.