'100% verification of VVPAT slips is a regressive thought, would be reverting to paper ballot system': ECI to SC

The ECI’s response came on a plea filed by the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), represented by advocate Prashant Bhushan, for cross-verifying the counts in EVMs with VVPATs (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail) in all polling booths, which is limited to five polling stations per assembly constituency. Reports ETV Bharat's Sumit Saxena

New Delhi: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has told the Supreme Court that the counting of 100% VVPAT slips will be against the spirit of use of EVM, which is reverting back to the paper ballot system, and stressed that theoretically there may be a discrepancy between the EVM count and the VVPAT slips count, but practically there may be no possibility of any discrepancy between the EVM count and the VVPAT slips count, except human error in counting the VVPAT slips.

The ECI emphasized that voters have no fundamental right to verify through VVPAT that their vote has been recorded as cast and counted as recorded. The ECI’s response came on a plea filed by the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), represented by advocate Prashant Bhushan, for cross-verifying the counts in EVMs with VVPATs (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail) in all polling booths, which is limited to five polling stations per assembly constituency.

The ECI, in a 469-page affidavit, said VVPAT is essentially an 'audit trail' for the voter to instantaneously verify his or her vote cast in the ballot unit. “However, based on the directions of the Hon'ble Apex Court, VVPATS slips are being cross-verified on a statistically robust sampling basis. Therefore, to press forward a ground for 100% verification of VVPAT slips is a regressive thought and tantamount only to going back indirectly to the days of manual voting using the ballot system”, said the ECI, while pressing for the dismissal of the plea by ADR.

Emphasizing the security of EVMS, the affidavit said that in the ECI-EVM, the Control Unit (CU) retains in the memory each vote recorded elector-wise. The ECI-EVM has an inbuilt system of recording each vote (candidate button no. pressed by the voter on the Ballot Unit) with date and time stamp and the same can be retrieved by using a decoder or printer (customized) based on orders of the courts, it added.

The ECI said that theoretically there may be a discrepancy between the EVM count and the VVPAT slips count, but practically there may be no possibility of any discrepancy between the EVM count and the VVPAT slips count, except human error in counting the VVPAT slips.

The ECI said that to date ballot slips of 34,680 randomly selected VVPATs have been tallied with the electronic counts of their CUs, and not a single case of transfer of vote meant for candidate ‘A’ to candidate ‘B’ has been detected.

The ECI said it has put in place stringent technical and administrative safeguards for the EVMS so that the machines could not be tampered (with) or manipulated to any extent whatsoever. “Further, all the election activities related to the EVMS are carried out in the presence of the political parties/candidates in the most transparent manner…..EVMs are totally stand-alone machines having One Time Programmable (OTP) chips. It cannot be hacked or tampered….”, said the affidavit.

The ECI said, “The counting of 100% VVPAT slips will against the spirit of use of EVM i.e. reverting back to Paper ballot system….”. The affidavit said that since the introduction of VVPATS, over 118 crore voters have cast their votes with full satisfaction and only 25 (twenty-five) complaints have been received under Rule 49MA, which were all found to be false.

The ECI said in the case of 100% counting of VVPAT slips, it may take more time than the time specified above for ballot counting. Moreover, in case of recounting due to recounting demand or any human error the time may be endless, it added.

The plea sought a direction seeking to cross-verify the vote count in EVMs with votes separately “recorded as cast” in the VVPAT and also a declaration that is the fundamental right of every voter to verify that their vote has been ‘recorded as cast’ and ‘counted as recorded'.

The ECI affidavit said the petitioner’s prayer is misconceived and incorrect as there is no difference between ‘recorded as cast’ and ‘counted as recorded’.

“Voter has no fundamental right to verify through VVPAT that their vote has been recorded as cast and counted as recorded. Provisions of Conduct of election rules do not violate any fundamental rights and has undergone judicial scrutiny on many times, its constitutionality has been upheld time and again”, said the affidavit.

On Wednesday, a bench led by Justice Sanjiv Khanna declined to give an urgent hearing on the petition and scheduled the matter for a hearing in November. The bench told Bhushan, “How many times will this issue be raised? Every six months. There is no urgency. We will hear in due course…..”.

The apex court said every year, a fresh petition is filed about this and there are other urgent matters, and this is not a criminal case.

Previously, the apex court had asked Bhushan “Aren’t you being over suspicious”?

The plea said: “The requirement of the voter verifying that her vote has been ‘recorded as cast’ is somewhat met when the VVPAT slip is displayed for about seven seconds after pressing of the button on the EVM through a transparent window for the voter to verify that his/her vote has been ‘recorded as cast’ on the internally printed VVPAT slip before the slip falls into a ‘ballot box’”.

The plea contended that however, there is a complete vacuum in law as the ECI has provided no procedure for the voter to verify that her vote has been ‘counted as recorded’ which is an indispensable part of voter verifiability. “The failure of the ECI to provide for the same is in the teeth of purport and object of the directions issued by this court in paragraphs 28 and 29 of Subramanian Swamy v. Election Commission of India, (2013)”, it contended.

The plea argued that the prevalent procedure wherein the ECI only counts the electronically recorded votes in all of the EVMs and cross-verifies the relevant EVMs with the VVPATs in only five randomly selected polling stations in each assembly constituency. “The electronic recording of the voter’s choice in the EVM does not meet the criteria of vote being verified as 'recorded as cast' as the voter only verifies the VVPAT; There is no way for any of the voters to verify that their individual vote has actually been ‘counted as recorded’ because there is no procedure provided for by the ECI for them to match the VVPATs that they had certified as being ‘recorded as cast’ with what is actually counted”, it said.