SC to pronounce judgement on EVM-VVPAT 100% verification Friday

The Supreme Court will pronounce judgment tomorrow on a batch of petitions seeking 100% verification of the votes recorded in the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) with the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips.

A bench comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta had reserved its judgment on the batch of petitions including one by the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) on April 18 after concluding extensive hearing for two days.

The hearing in the matter had concluded on April 18, and the verdict was reserved the same day to be pronounced on April 24.

On April 24 the court put a hold on its judgement and sought further clarification from the Election Commission (EC) on certain crucial points.

During the hearing, the bench asked the ECI about the workings of the EVMs and VVPATs and their security features.

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

The writ petitions have been filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), Abhay Bhakchand Chhajed and Arun Kumar Aggarwal.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan appeared for the NGO ADR and stressed the need to have the VVPATS along with the EVM.

The Bench had at the outset turned down Bhushan’s request to go back to the manual voting system. The bench said there was a bigger problem in the manual counting process and reminded Bhushan of the days when booth capturing was done.

Justice Sanjiv Khanna said, one should not doubt the system but ensure that human intervention and tampering are not allowed. Justice Khanna had also asked ECI whether there is any punishment prescribed under the Indian Penal Code for those who tamper with the EVMs.

The petitioners had also sought that instead of the prevalent procedure, where the Election Commission cross-verifies EVM votes with VVPATs in only 5 randomly selected polling stations in each assembly constituency, all VVPATs be verified.

Further, the petitioners had sought measures to ensure that a vote is 'recorded as cast' and 'counted as recorded'.

The Supreme Court had on April 24, again sought further clarifications from the ECI. Justice Khanna asked the Election Commission to clarify whether the microcontroller was installed in the Control Unit or the VVPAT.

The Court further asked the EC,“Is the microcontroller which is installed one-time programmable? (ECI stand is that it is, implying it cannot be modified)

The Court also asked, "How many Symbol Loading Units are available? Is the limitation period for filing an election petition 30 days as such storage is 45 days?"

Justice Khanna had also commented verbally that, “the source code of the EVM should never be disclosed...it will become a problem...people will then try and misuse", the court had said.

As per the cause list for tomorrow April 26, there are two judgments in the case - one by Justice Khanna and the other by Justice Datta. The two judges will pronounce their judgement separately.