 "There have been demands for 100 per cent cross-verification of EVM votes with the VVPAT paper slips. PTI File Photo")
The Supreme Court on Wednesday (24 April) reserved its judgement on a plea seeking 100 per cent cross-verification of Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) votes with voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT). The top court said it is not the controlling authority for elections and cannot order around the functioning of the Election Commission of India (ECI).
This comes after the apex court posed several questions to the ECI. A senior official of the poll body appeared before the apex court at 2 PM to explain these queries.
Some of the questions concern the installation of the micro-controller in the EVMs and ensuring the safety of the machine. A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta has opposed revealing the source code of the EVMs, saying it will be “misused”.
How did the VVPATs come to be? What is the controversy surrounding the EVM-VVPAT systems? Let’s take a closer look.
What are VVPATs?
Once a voter casts their ballot, the VVPAT machine prints a slip of paper displaying the choice. The printed slip, which remains behind a glass, is visible for seven seconds for the voter to check whether their ballot was cast correctly. This slip then falls into a box underneath.
The VVPATs are connected to the ballot unit (BU) of the EVMs.
On the day of the counting, these slips are used by the polling officials to verify votes cast in five randomly selected polling booths per Assembly constituency.
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More ShortsThe introduction of VVPATs
The idea of VVPATs emerged in 2010 after the Election Commission held a meeting with political parties to discuss ways to bring more transparency to the polling process, as per The Hindu report.
The proposal was then referred to the ECI’s Technical Expert Committee.
According to Indian Express, the Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and Electronics Corporation of India (ECIL) – which manufacture the EVMs – later prepared a prototype.
The final design of the VVPATs was okayed by the Election Commission in February 2013 after field trials were held in Ladakh, Thiruvananthapuram, Cherrapunjee, East Delhi and Jaisalmer, The Hindu reported.
In 2013, the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961 was amended to allow for the use of VVPAT machines, which were deployed for the first time in all 21 polling stations of the Noksen Assembly constituency of Nagaland that year, according to the Indian Express report.
The ECI started introducing VVPATs in a phased manner. By 2017, these machines were being used in all polls. The 2019 Lok Sabha elections were the first general elections that saw 100 per cent of EVMs being attached to VVPATs, as per the newspaper report.
In 2018, the Election Commission asked the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) to prepare a “mathematically sound, statistically robust and practically cogent sample size for the internal audit of the VVPAT slips with the electronic result of EVMs.”
The poll body in February 2018 directed the counting of VVPAT slips of one randomly selected polling station per Assembly constituency.
However, in April 2019, the Supreme Court ordered the ECI to increase the number of polling booths where VVPATs are cross-verified to five per Assembly seat, following a petition filed by the then Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu.
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The controversy over EVM-VVPATs
The EVMs have come under scanner, with critics claiming the machines can be manipulated. They have been demanding the cross-verification of all EVM votes with the VVPAT paper slips.
Last December, the Opposition INDIA bloc passed a resolution calling for “100 per cent counting of VVPAT slips”. “Instead of the VVPAT slip falling in the box, it should be handed over to the voter who shall then place it in a separate ballot box after having verified his or her choice. 100 per cent counting of VVPAT slips should then be done. This will restore full confidence of the people in free and fair elections”, its resolution said at the time.
The Association for Democratic Rights (ADR) and other petitioners have moved the apex court seeking the cross-verification of all VVPATs. They have also asked the Supreme Court to ensure a vote is ‘recorded as cast’ and ‘counted as recorded’, reported LiveLaw.
They have expressed apprehensions that the EVMs could malfunction or be tampered with to record votes in favour of a political party, as per The Hindu.
The petitioners have also pointed out the example of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls when, in some cases, a difference was reported in the results recorded in the EVMs and VVPATs.
“To illustrate, during mandatory verification of paper slips of VVPAT of five randomly selected polling stations, in polling station no. 63 of Mydukur assembly constituency in Andhra Pradesh in the 2019 general elections, the returning officer officially verified that there was a discrepancy of 14 votes in the EVM and VVPAT counts,” the plea read, as per The Hindu.
However, the ECI has maintained that EVMs are safe and cannot be tampered with “at any stage.”
Objecting to the cross-verification of 100 per cent EVM votes with VVPAT slips, the EC said it was a “regressive thought and tantamount to going back to the days of manual voting using ballot system”.
However, the poll body has admitted that “differences in count, if any, have always been traceable to human errors like non-deletion of mock poll votes” from the control unit of the EVM or the VVPAT, as per The Hindu report.
On 18 April, the Supreme Court reserved its verdict on the matter. During the proceedings, the top court told the petitioners that “it was not good to be over-suspicious about everything” and that there should not be attempts to “bring down the system.”
“Mismatch between EVMs, VVPAT and register entries at a polling booth could happen because of a mix of factors. There are times when people sign in to the register and enter the poll booths but do not press the EVM. There could be similar other reasons,” the apex court said.
The Supreme Court’s judgement will be significant as it had previously turned down a writ petition seeking 100 per cent counting of VVPAT in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. India is holding general elections in seven phases, with the counting of votes on 4 June.
With inputs from agencies