New Delhi: In a significant move aimed at ensuring electoral transparency, the Supreme Court has directed that no data from Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) be deleted or reloaded after the polls, until a formal standard operating procedure is established.
Speaking through a bench led by Chief Justice Sanjeev Khanna, the Court instructed the Election Commission to furnish details regarding its process for burning the memory and microcontroller components of the EVMs post-elections.
“This is not adversarial,” Chief Justice Khanna remarked, adding that any concerns raised by a losing candidate can be addressed by having an engineer verify that there has been no tampering with the machines. The directive was issued while the Court was hearing a petition filed by the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), Haryana, along with a group of Congress leaders. The petition had called for a court order directing the Commission to devise a policy that would allow for the verification of original burnt data from EVM components.
The Court’s order underscores the need for a clear and robust protocol for the post-poll handling of EVM data, a step seen as critical to maintaining the integrity of the electoral process. The Election Commission is now expected to provide a detailed explanation of its procedures to the Court.
