New Delhi:

In a major development, the Supreme Court on Monday sought response from the Election Commission and the Center seeking a complete count of VVPAT slips in polls, instead of the current practice of verifying only five randomly selected EVMs through VVPAT slips.

Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) is an independent vote verification system that allows a voter to see whether his vote was correct.

VVPAT generates a note for the voter to view, which is kept in a sealed lid that can be opened in the event of a dispute.

The Supreme Court on April 8, 2019 ordered the poll panel to increase the number of EVMs subject to VVPAT physical verification from one to five in each assembly segment of the assembly constituency.

The bench, comprising Justices BR Gavai and Sandeep Mehta, took note of the submissions made by counsel representing activist Arun Kumar Agrawal, seeking a complete tally of VVPAT slips in elections instead of verifying only five randomly selected EVMs through VVPAT slips.

It issued notices to the Election Commission (EC) and the central government regarding the plea and a hearing is likely to be held on May 17.

Senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan and advocate Neha Rathi appeared for Agrawal.

The request challenges EC guidelines that require VVPAT verification to be done sequentially, one after the other.

The plea said that if verification is done simultaneously and more police personnel are deployed in each assembly constituency for counting of votes, the complete VVPAT verification can be completed in about five to six hours.

The government has spent nearly Rs 5,000 crore to purchase nearly 2.4 million VVPATs, but only about 20,000 VVPAT slips have been verified so far.

Given that experts have raised many questions about VVPAT and EVM and a large number of discrepancies between EVM and VVPAT vote counts have been reported in the past, it is imperative that all VVPAT slips are counted and the votes cast by voters are determined. The petition states that he was given the opportunity to cast his VVPAT vote in the ballot box to properly verify whether the vote cast by him in the ballot paper was also counted.

The notification was issued by the Supreme Court and marked as pending matters on the issue.

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