In a major improvement forward of the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, the Supreme Court docket on Monday sought responses from the Election Fee and the Centre on a plea in search of an entire rely of VVPAT slips, as reported by information company PTI. The Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Path (VVPAT) is an unbiased vote verification system that allows an elector to see whether or not his vote was forged appropriately.
As per the present follow, verification of solely 5 randomly chosen EVMs by means of VVPAT paper slips is completed. The VVPAT generates a paper slip that may be considered by the voter, and the paper slip is saved in a sealed cowl and could be opened in case of a dispute.
In 2019, the apex courtroom issued an order to the highest ballot physique to extend the variety of EVMs that bear VVPAT bodily verification from one to 5 per meeting phase in a parliamentary constituency. The plea in search of an entire rely of VVPAT slips within the election versus the verification of solely 5 randomly chosen EVMs by means of VVPAT paper slips was submitted by attorneys representing activist Arun Kumar Agrawal.
A bench comprising justices B R Gavai and Sandeep Mehta took word of the plea, and it issued notices to the Election Fee (EC) and the central authorities on the plea, which can be listed for listening to on Might 17, as reported by PTI. Senior lawyer Gopal Sankaranarayanan and advocate Neha Rathi appeared for Agrawal.
The plea assailed the rules of the ballot physique in line with which VVPAT verification shall be performed sequentially, one after the opposite.
As per the plea, if simultaneous verification is completed and extra officers are deployed for counting in every meeting constituency, then full VVPAT verification could be performed in a matter of five-six hours, as reported by PTI. The federal government has spent almost Rs 5,000 crore on the acquisition of almost 24 lakh VVPATs, however presently, VVPAT slips of solely roughly 20,000 VVPATs are verified, the plea acknowledged.
Provided that many questions are being raised by specialists with regard to VVPATs and EVMs and the truth that numerous discrepancies between the EVM and VVPAT vote rely have been reported prior to now, it’s crucial that every one VVPAT slips are counted and a voter is given a possibility 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 stated, as reported by PTI.
The highest courtroom issued the discover and tagged it with pending issues on the problem.