Supreme Court rejects opposition plea to review order seeking to increase VVPAT counting  

The Supreme Court of India.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court, on Tuesday, dismissed a plea of 21 opposition parties, led by Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu, seeking to review its judgment rejecting 50 per cent random physical verification of electronic voting machines (EVMs) using voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPATs).

The opposition parties had moved to the court after reports of defective EVMs emerged after the first phase of the Lok Sabha election. In some cases, it was reported, voters would cast their vote for a party but the EVM would record their vote for another party.

The bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, in its April 8 order, directed the Election Commission to increase matching of VVPAT slips with EVMs from one to five polling stations per assembly seat.

Senior advocate AM Singhvi, who is representing the opposition, said, “We have asked for 50 per cent (verification), but we can settle for 33 or 25 per cent verification. My Lords had agreed with our plea in principle, but increased the counting from one VVPAT to only five. My Lords said 50 per cent was not ‘viable’ at this point of time during the Lok Sabha election.”

The Election Commission had contended that the results would be delayed by six days if the parties’ demand was met.

Apart from Naidu, the petitioners included, Sharad Pawar of the NCP, Congress leader KC Venugopal, Trinamool Congress leader Derek O’Brien, Sharad Yadav of the Loktantrik Janata Dal, SP leader Akhilesh Yadav, Satish Chandra Mishra of the BSP, DMK leader M K Stalin, AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal and National Congress leader Farooq Abdullah.

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