New Delhi: The Supreme Court docket on Monday sought responses from the Election Fee and the Centre relating to a petition looking for an entire depend of Voter Verified Paper Audit Path (VVPAT) slips in elections, contrasting with the present apply of verifying solely 5 randomly chosen EVMs by means of VVPAT paper slips.
The VVPAT is an autonomous vote verification system that allows a voter to substantiate whether or not their vote was recorded precisely. The VVPAT generates a paper slip that shows the voter’s chosen candidate’s title or image. This paper slip is seen to the voter by means of a clear window for a couple of seconds, permitting them to confirm their vote. The paper slip is then saved in a sealed container hooked up to the EVM and can be utilized as a bodily report for verification in case of any dispute relating to the digital voting outcomes.
On April 8, 2019, the Supreme Court docket instructed the Election Fee to lift the variety of EVMs subjected to VVPAT bodily verification from one to 5 per meeting section inside a parliamentary constituency.
A bench comprising justices B R Gavai and Sandeep Mehta took word of the submissions of legal professionals representing activist Arun Kumar Agrawal looking for an entire depend of VVPAT slips in elections versus the verification of solely 5 randomly-selected EVMs by means of VVPAT paper slips.
Supreme Court docket points discover
The Supreme Court docket issued notices to each the Election Fee (EC) and the central authorities relating to the plea, which is predicted to be scheduled for a listening to on Could 17.
Senior lawyer Gopal Sankaranarayanan and advocate Neha Rathi represented Agrawal in courtroom.
Here is what plea states
The plea assailed the EC’s guideline that mandates that VVPAT verification shall be carried out sequentially, one after the opposite.
The plea mentioned if simultaneous verification is finished and extra officers are deployed for counting in every meeting constituency, then full VVPAT verification may be carried out in a matter of five-six hours.
The federal government has spent practically Rs 5,000 crore on the acquisition of practically 24 lakh VVPATs however presently, VVPAT slips of solely roughly 20,000 VVPATs are verified, it mentioned.
Provided that many questions are being raised by specialists with regard to VVPATs and EVMs and the truth that a lot of discrepancies between EVM and VVPAT vote depend have been reported previously, it’s crucial that every one VVPAT slips are counted and a voter is given a chance to correctly confirm that his vote as forged within the poll can also be counted by permitting him to bodily drop his/her VVPAT slip within the poll field, the plea mentioned.
The highest courtroom issued the discover and tagged it with pending issues on the difficulty.
(With PTI inputs)
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