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Supreme Court to deliver verdict on pleas seeking complete count of VVPAT slips

by Trans World Features | @twfindia 24 Apr 2024, 12:32 pm

New Delhi : The Supreme Court will on Wednesday deliver its verdict on pleas seeking a complete count of Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips to tally with the number of votes cast in the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) during elections, media reports said.

A top court bench of Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta has asked an official from the Election Commission of India (ECI) to be present before the court at 2 pm to answer a few questions, NDTV reported.

In the last hearing, senior advocate Maninder Singh, who appeared for the election panel, claimed EVMs can't be tampered with but did not rule out any human error.

'There has to be sanctity in electoral process': SC tells EC

The Supreme Court last week told the Election Commission of India that ‘there has to be sanctity in the electoral process,’ asking it to explain in detail the steps of cross-verifying VVPAT slips with EVMs.

The Supreme Court was reviewing a string of petitions asking for thorough cross-verification of votes cast through Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) using Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT).

VVPAT is a separate system for verifying votes that allows voters to confirm if their votes were recorded accurately.

Currently, VVPAT verification is conducted on just five randomly chosen EVMs in each assembly segment.

"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 of Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Dipankar Datta said, reported India Today.