SC rejects pleas for paper ballot voting, 100% EVM-VVPAT verification, physical deposit of VVPAT slips

New Delhi: The Supreme Court of India has rejected all the pleas for paper ballot voting, 100% EVM-VVPAT verification and physical deposit of VVPAT slips.

A two-judge bench with Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta announced the verdict at 10:30 AM today.

The court has released two direction in the case. Justice Khanna said, “One direction is after the completion of symbol loading process, the Symbol Loading Unit should be sealed. The SLU should be stored at least for a period of 45 days,” live law reported.

In the second direction, the court ordered that the burnt memory in the microcontroller EVM should be checked by a team of engineers after the declaration of results on a request by candidates in serial number 2 and 3.

“The expenses for the verification (of the program) to be borne by the candidates making the request, in case the EVM is found to be tampered, the expenses will be refunded,” Justice Khanna said.

The SC had earlier reserved its judgement on the matter on April 24 requesting clarification from the Election Commission in the 100 percent verification.

During the hearing, the bench asked specific technical concerns about EVMs, specifically the reprogrammability of their microcontrollers. In response, the Election Commission of India emphasised that the microcontrollers in EVMs are one-time programmable and cannot be changed after manufacture.

“We just wanted 3-4 clarifications. Factually, we should correct. One is, is the micro controller installed in the controlling unit or in the VVPAT? There seems to be indication, we were under the impression that the microcontroller is in the Control Unit. We were told that VVPAT has a flash memory,” Justice Sanjiv Khanna was quoted as saying by LiveLaw.

In response to these concerns, the Election commission said that any sort of tampering is not possible with the EVM. Further, the ECI claimed that conducting a complete count of the VVPAT slips is not feasible and practical.

The VVPAT is a technique that assures voters receive visual evidence that their vote was cast. Paper slips are shown on the VVPAT machine for seven seconds, along with the candidate’s serial number, name and party symbol they voted for, allowing voters to check their votes.