VVPAT cross-verification: “Can’t go back to ballot era”, says SC

The Supreme Court while hearing pleas seeking cross-verification of the votes cast with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) said that the country can’t go back to the ballot paper era given its huge population.

A bench of justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta on Tuesday heard the petition demanding 100% cross-verification of votes cast on EVMs with Voter Verified Paper Audit Trails (VVPATs). Lawyer Prashant Bhushan argued in favour for the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR).

The bench said that human intervention in the polling and counting process could lead to further problems and biases. 

The apex court said the current system of polling through Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) cannot be pulled down without there being any substantial issue of propriety in the process.

It warned against the dangers of going back to the traditional ballot box system. At present, the VVPAT-EVM verification is limited to five in each assembly segment of a constituency, reported Hindustan Times.

Alternatively, the petitions also argued in favour of going back to the ballot box system, saying that several European countries, including Germany, went back to the traditional system of casting votes.

"We are in our 60s. We all know what happened when there were ballot papers; you may have, but we have not forgotten,” Justice Sanjiv Khanna said.

The apex court rejected the arguments of Bhushan, appearing for the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), about how most European countries that had opted for voting through EVMs have returned to paper ballots.

The court further said that voting in India is a “humongous task” that may not even be possible for several European countries. 

“What’s the population of Germany? And how many people vote in India? There are almost 98 crore voters in India and around 60% vote. At least that many people vote...So, you are saying 60 crore VVPAT should be tallied,” it told advocates Prashant Bhushan, and senior counsel Gopal Sankaranarayanan, Anand Grover and Huzefa Ahmadi, who appeared for the bunch of petitioners.

The court also asked ECI to be ready with statistics and pertinent information on the functioning of EVMs and VVPATs on the next hearing.

“As we said, when there are no human interventions, there are mostly no problems. Machines are manipulated by humans...There’s bound to be some instances of mismatch because of human errors,” added the court.

The next hearing of the case is set on Thursday (April 18).