‘Don’t try to bring down the system’, says Supreme Court on pleas to count all VVPAT slips

The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed criticism of voting through the Electronic Voting Machines and said that attempts should not be made to “bring down the system”, PTI reported.

A bench comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta also said that the electoral process in India was a “humongous task” and rejected suggestions by petitioners to order a return to ballot papers in polling.

The bench recalled how polling booths were allegedly captured when ballot papers were in use to manipulate the election results. “We have seen what used to happen earlier,” Khanna said.

The court was hearing a batch of pleas seeking tallying of all Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail slips to verify votes cast through the Electronic Voting Machines.

Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail is a machine that prints a paper slip of the candidate’s name, serial number and the party’s symbol after a voter has cast their vote. To avoid election fraud, it displays the paper slip for seven seconds for the voters to check if their vote has been correctly cast for their chosen candidate.

The paper slip then drops down to a locked compartment that only the polling agent can access. The slips are not handed over to the voters. The collected slips can be used...

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