Supreme Court issues notice to ECI on a petition seeking a thorough count of all VVPAT paper slips in elections

On April 01, 2024 (Monday), the Supreme Court (SC) of India issued notice to the Election Commission of India (ECI) on a petition seeking a thorough count of all VVPAT (Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail) paper slips in elections. The notice was issued by a two-judge bench constituting Justice BR Gavai and Justice Sandeep Mehta and tagged the petition with another plea seeking similar reliefs filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms. Currently, VVPAT verification is done with respect to votes recorded in five randomly selected EVMs (Electronic Voting Machines) in each assembly segment. In this case, the petitioner challenges the guideline of the ECI mandating VVPAT verification to be done sequentially which causes undue delay. It added, “If simultaneous verification is done and more officers are deployed for counting in each assembly constituency, then complete VVPAT verification can be done in a matter of 5-6 hours.” The plea stated, “The petitioner is further seeking to quash and set aside Guideline No. 14.7(h) of the Manual on Electronic Voting Machine and VVPAT dates August 2023 as framed and issued by Election Commission of India in so far as it allows only sequential verification of VVPAT slips resulting in undue delay in counting of all VVPAT slips.” 

The petitioner, in the plea, also mentioned that the Centre has spent approximately Rs. 5000 crore on the purchase of nearly 24 lakh VVPATs but only 20,000 VVPATs slips (approximately) are verified currently. It added, “Given that many questions are being raised by experts with regard to VVPATs and EVMs and the fact that a large number of discrepancies between EVM and VVPAT vote count have been reported in the past, it is imperative that all VVPAT slips are counted and a voter is given an opportunity to properly verify that his vote as cast in the ballot is also counted by allowing him to physically drop his/her VVPAT slip in the ballot box.” During the hearing, Senior Advocate Gopal Sarkarnarayanan and SA Neha Rathi appeared for the petitioner. After hearing the matter, the SC bench issued a notice to the Election Commission of India.