Supreme Court to hear on April 16 PILs seeking cross-verification of votes cast in EVMs with VVPAT slips
New Delhi, April 9
Three days before the seven-phase Lok Sabha polls begin on April 19, the Supreme Court will take up on April 16 PILs seeking cross-verification of the votes cast in EVMs with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT).
A Bench led by Justice Sanjiv Khanna on Tuesday said it will consider all the petitions on the contentious issue next Tuesday.
On July 17, last year, the top court had asked the Election Commission to respond to Association for Democratic Reforms’ petition seeking a direction to the Election Commission and the Centre to ensure voters were able to verify through VVPATs that their vote had been “counted as recorded”.
The petitioners have demanded that all VVPATs should be verified, instead of the current practice of randomly verifying five EVMs per assembly segment.
On April 1, a Bench led by Justice BR Gavai had issued notice on another petition seeking 100% verification of VVPAT slips and tagged it with the already pending matter on the issue.
The VVPAT is an independent vote verification system which enables an elector to see whether his vote was cast correctly. It generates a paper slip which can be viewed by the voter. It is kept in a sealed cover and can be opened in case of a dispute.
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