The Supreme Court on Thursday while hearing petitions seeking 100 percent verification of Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) against Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) records asked the Election Commission of India (ECI) to explain the working of the EVM-VVPAT and said that there has to be sanctity in the electoral process.
“This is (an) electoral process. There has to be sanctity. Let nobody have apprehension that something which is expected is not being done,” the bench headed by Justice Sanjiv Khanna said.
Representing one of the petitioners, Advocate Nizam Pasha said that a voter should be allowed to take the VVPAT slip after he votes and deposit it in a ballot box. Following this, Justice Khanna questioned if such a process would affect the voter’s privacy to which advocate Pasha replied, “Voter privacy cannot be used to defeat voter’s rights.”
On the Supreme Court’s demand to explain the working of EVM-VVPAT, the poll body said that before the machines are placed at the strong room, 100 percent of the machines are checked via mock polling in the presence of representatives of all political parties.
Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde, appearing for petitioners, said there should be a separate audit to add greater credibility to the counting process.Replying to this Advocate Prashant Bhushan cited a report on mock poll results in Kerala, where extra votes were recorded for the BJP.
The top court was hearing petitions seeking cross-verification of votes polled on Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) by matching them with VVPAT paper slips. This comes a day ahead of the first phase of 2024 Lok Sabha election, which is scheduled to take place on Friday.
What is VVPAT & How It Works?
The VVPAT — Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail — is a method of providing feedback to voters using a ballotless voting system. A VVPAT is intended as an independent verification system for voting machines designed to allow voters to verify that their vote was cast correctly, to detect possible election fraud or malfunction, and to provide a means to audit the stored electronic results.
The machine contains the name of the candidate (for whom vote has been cast) and symbol of the party/individual candidate.
The VVPATs are a second line of verification and are particularly useful at the time when allegations around Electronic Voting Machines’ tampering arise. The machines can be accessed by the polling officials and not by the voters.
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