New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday sought responses from the Election Commission and the Centre relating to a petition looking for a complete count of Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips in elections, contrasting with the present follow of verifying solely 5 randomly chosen EVMs by means of VVPAT paper slips.
The VVPAT is an autonomous vote verification system that allows a voter to verify whether or not their vote was recorded precisely. The VVPAT generates a paper slip that shows the voter’s chosen candidate’s identify or image. This paper slip is seen to the voter by means of a clear window for a number of seconds, permitting them to confirm their vote. The paper slip is then saved in a sealed container hooked up to the EVM and can be utilized as a bodily report for verification in case of any dispute relating to the digital voting outcomes.
On April 8, 2019, the Supreme Court instructed the Election Commission to boost the quantity of EVMs subjected to VVPAT bodily verification from one to 5 per meeting phase inside a parliamentary constituency.
A bench comprising justices B R Gavai and Sandeep Mehta took observe of the submissions of legal professionals representing activist Arun Kumar Agrawal looking for a complete count of VVPAT slips in elections versus the verification of solely 5 randomly-selected EVMs by means of VVPAT paper slips.
Supreme Court points discover
The Supreme Court issued notices to each the Election Commission (EC) and the central authorities relating to the plea, which is anticipated to be scheduled for a listening to on May 17.
Senior lawyer Gopal Sankaranarayanan and advocate Neha Rathi represented Agrawal in court docket.
Here’s what plea states
The plea assailed the EC’s guideline that mandates that VVPAT verification shall be carried out sequentially, one after the opposite.
The plea stated if simultaneous verification is completed and extra officers are deployed for counting in every meeting constituency, then complete VVPAT verification might be carried out in a matter of five-six hours.
The authorities has spent almost Rs 5,000 crore on the acquisition of almost 24 lakh VVPATs however presently, VVPAT slips of solely roughly 20,000 VVPATs are verified, it stated.
Given that many questions are being raised by consultants with regard to VVPATs and EVMs and the truth that a big quantity of discrepancies between EVM and VVPAT vote count have been reported previously, it’s crucial that every one VVPAT slips are counted and a voter is given a chance to correctly confirm that his vote as solid within the poll can also be counted by permitting him to bodily drop his/her VVPAT slip within the poll field, the plea stated.
The prime court docket issued the discover and tagged it with pending issues on the difficulty.
(With PTI inputs)