Petition filed in SC seeking review of apex court's VVPAT-EVM verification verdict
May 13, 2024
New Delhi [India], May 13 : A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking review of its judgement rejecting the plea for 100 per cent verification of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) votes with their Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips.
The review petition filed by Arun Kumar Agarwal contends that there are mistakes and errors apparent in the April 26 judgement.
The review petition stated, "It is not correct to state that the result will be unreasonably delayed (by tallying EVM votes with VVPAT slips), or that the manpower required will be double that already deployed. Existing CCTV surveillance of counting halls would ensure that manipulation and mischief do not occur in VVPAT slip counting."
The petitioner sought a review of the April 26 judgement, in which it declined the petitions that sought cross-verification by the voters of votes cast by them as "counted as recorded" in the EVMs with VVPAT.
However, in the review petition, the petitioner stated, "Electronic voting machines do not allow voters to verify that their votes have been accurately recorded. Furthermore, given their very nature, electronic voting machines are especially vulnerable to malicious changes by insiders such as designers, programmers, manufacturers, maintenance technicians, etc."
"Therefore, in light of the above, there are apparent errors on the face of the impugned order dated April 26, 2024, and the impugned judgement is liable to be reviewed," it added.
In its judgement, the apex court also rejected the petitioners' prayer to revert back to the paper ballot voting system.
Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), Arun Kumar Aggarwal, among others, had filed petitions in the top court seeking more extensive verification of EVM data against VVPAT records.
The Lok Sabha elections are being held in seven phases from April 19 to June 1.
