SC rejects pleas seeking verification of all EVM votes with VVPAT slips
After a 2019 Supreme Court order, VVPAT slips from only five randomly selected polling stations in each Assembly segment are verified.
The Supreme Court on Friday rejected all pleas seeking the tallying of all Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail slips to verify votes cast through Electronic Voting Machines, reported The Indian Express.
A division bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta pronounced the verdict after it had convened a hearing on Wednesday with questions for the Election Commission. It had reserved the judgement on April 18.
“One suggestion which can be examined by the Election Commission of India would be whether there can be electronic machines for counting paper slips and whether there can be a bar code along with the symbols as regards which party,” the court said on Friday.
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 people have cast their vote. To avoid election fraud, it displays the paper slip for seven seconds for people 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.
The petitioners had sought a return to ballot paper system of voting or...
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