Microcontrollers in EVMs, VVPATs do not recognise party and candidate, observes Supreme Court
The court reserved its verdict on pleas seeking tallying of all Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail slips with the votes cast in Electronic Voting Machines.
The microcontrollers in the Electronic Voting Machines and the Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail are “agnostic” as they do not recognise a party or the candidate’s name, the Supreme Court observed verbally on Wednesday, according to The Hindu.
A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta was hearing a batch of petitions seeking the tallying of all Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail slips to verify votes cast through the Electronic Voting Machines. The court had reserved its judgement in the case on April 18. However, it convened again on Wednesday with questions for the Election Commission.
After hearing the poll panel’s response, the bench once again reserved its judgement in the case.
A 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 cast correctly.
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 to audit voting data stored electronically.
On Wednesday, the bench posed five questions to the...
Read more
