SC dismisses petition seeking review of its VVPAT verdict

Satya Prakash

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New Delhi, July 30

The Supreme Court has refused to review its verdict rejecting PILs demanding return to the paper ballot system or a 100% cross-verification of votes cast through EVMs with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips.

“We have carefully perused the review petition, as also the grounds in support thereof. In our opinion, no case for review of the judgment dated 26.04.2024 is made out. The review petition is, accordingly, dismissed,” a Bench of Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Dipankar Datta said in its July 25 order, rejecting the review petition.

The Bench had on April 26 dismissed a PIL filed by Arun Kumar Agrawal seeking return to the paper ballot system or a 100% cross-verification of votes cast through EVMs with VVPAT slips even as it issued certain directions to the Election Commission to strengthen the current EVM system.

Giving the thumbs up to the EVM system in the midst of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Bench had said, “EVMs offer significant advantages. They have effectively eliminated booth capturing by restricting the rate of vote casting to 4 votes per minute, thereby prolonging the time needed and thus check insertion of bogus votes. EVMs have eliminated invalid votes, which were a major issue with paper ballots and had often sparked disputes during the counting process. Furthermore, EVMs reduce paper usage and alleviate logistical challenges. Finally, they provide administrative convenience by expediting the counting process and minimising errors.”

“hellip;keeping in view the vast size of the Indian electorate of nearly 97 crore, the number of candidateshellip;, the number of polling boothshellip;, and the problems faced with ballot papers, we would be undoing the electoral reforms by directing reintroduction of the ballot papers,” it had said.

However, the petitioner contended EVMs didn’t allow voters to verify that their votes have been accurately recorded.

“There are mistakes and errors apparent on the face of the impugned order…, and as such there are sufficient reasons which require review of the impugned order/judgment,” read the review petition filed on May 10 by Agrawal, on whose PIL the top court had delivered the April 26 verdict.

“The petitioner respectfully seeks review on the following issues as have been dealt with in judgment dated April 26, 2024: i) Feasibility of counting of all VVPAT paper slips in terms of time to be taken and additional manpower, ii) Vulnerability of SLU (symbol loading units) and iii) Percentage of VVPAT slips counted for tallying with EVM votes after Chandrababu Naidu…Judgment,” Agrawal had submitted.

Seeking physical counting, the review petition had insisted that counting of all VVPAT slips can be done “accurately with a fraction of the employees and at a fraction of cost and within five to eight hours”. However, the top court turned it down.