New Delhi:The Supreme Court Monday sought response from the Election Commission of India (ECI) on a plea by NGO Association for Democratic Reforms to cross verify the count in EVMs with votes that have been verifiably ‘recorded as cast’ by the voters themselves i.e. the VVPATs. The ECI has been asked to reply in three weeks.
A bench comprising justices Sanjiv Khanna and Bela M. Trivedi queried advocate Prashant Bhushan, representing the NGO, are we not sometimes over suspicious? Bhushan contended that sometimes the registers and the vote counts do not match, and pointed out that only few VVPATs were being tallied with EVM vote counts. After hearing brief submissions, the top court sought response from the government watchdog, the ECI.
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 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)”, said the plea.
The plea argued that the prevalent procedure wherein the ECI only counts the electronically recorded votes in all of the EVM’s and cross verifies the relevant EVMs with the VVPATs in only 5 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”, said the plea.
The plea sought direction to the respondents to ensure that the voters are able to verify through VVPATs that their vote has been ‘counted as recorded’. It further sought a direction to declare as unconstitutional the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, and the practice and procedure of ECI to the extent that they violate the fundamental right of the voters to verify through VVPATs that their vote has been ‘recorded as cast’ and ‘counted as recorded.’
The plea contended that during the 2019 general elections there were ECI acknowledged instances, where there was variance in the results captured in the EVMs and that of the VVPATs. The plea said to illustrate, during mandatory verification of paper slips of VVPAT of 05 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 EVM count was 233 votes whereas the VVPAT count was 219 votes. In other words, 6 percent of the counted votes in that EVM had not been cast. The Returning Officer of the constituency later clarified that the discrepancy is true and was due to non-clearance of votes polled in the mock-poll conducted at 7 am on the polling day from the EVM”, said the plea.
