Supreme Court Serves Notice to ECI on Plea for Full EVM Votes-VVPAT Verification

Today, the Supreme Court issued a notice on a petition requesting the counting of all Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) paper slips in elections, rather than verifying only five randomly selected Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in each assembly segment of a parliamentary constituency. The order was passed by the Bench of Justices BR Gavai and Sandeep Mehta, and the petition was tagged with another plea filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms seeking similar reliefs.

The petition also challenges the Election Commission of India's (ECI) guideline that mandates sequential VVPAT verification, which causes unnecessary delay. The petition argues that if verification is done simultaneously and more officers are deployed for counting in each assembly constituency, then complete VVPAT verification can be accomplished within 5-6 hours.

The petitioner pointed out that while the government has spent nearly 5000 Crores on the purchase of nearly 24 lakh VVPATs, currently only about 20,000 VVPAT slips are verified. Given the numerous questions raised by experts regarding VVPATs and EVMs and the reported discrepancies between EVM and VVPAT vote counts in the past, the petitioner insists that all VVPAT slips should be counted and the voter should be allowed to verify that their vote has been counted by letting them physically drop their VVPAT slip into the ballot box.

The petitioner seeks four reliefs, including mandatory cross-verification of the count in EVMs with votes recorded by the voter through the VVPATs by counting all VVPAT paper slips, and quashing of the ECI's guideline that allows only sequential verification of VVPAT slips.

Senior Advocate Gopal Sankarnarayanan and Neha Rathi represented the petitioner. Earlier, in response to a similar petition filed by the ADR, the ECI had cited practical difficulties in verifying all VVPATs. A bench led by Justice Sanjiv Khanna had expressed reservations about the demand for 100% VVPAT verification, stating that it would add to the ECI's burden without providing much significant advantage.