• Source:JND
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The Supreme Court on Monday sought responses from the Election Commission and the Centre on a petition seeking a full count of VVPAT slips in elections, instead of the current method of verifying only five randomly chosen EVMs through VVPAT paper slips.

The Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) is an independent method to verify the veracity of the vote polled by an elector. It permits the voter to check whether her vote was cast correctly. The VVPAT produces a paper slip that voters can view and this slip is then sealed and can be opened if there's a disagreement.

Earlier in 2019, the Supreme Court had ordered the Election Commission to increase the number of EVMs that are verified through VVPAT from one to five per assembly segment in a parliamentary constituency.

A bench consisting of justices B R Gavai and Sandeep Mehta acknowledged the arguments put forth by lawyers representing activist Arun Kumar Agrawal, who advocated for a full tally of VVPAT slips during elections rather than the current practice of verifying only five randomly chosen EVMs using VVPAT paper slips.

The bench issued notices to both the Election Commission (EC) and the central government regarding the petition, which might be scheduled for a hearing on May 17.

Senior lawyer Gopal Sankaranarayanan and advocate Neha Rathi represented Agrawal. Their petition challenged the Election Commission's directive, which requires VVPAT verification to be conducted sequentially, one after another.

The petition argued that if simultaneous verification is carried out and more officers are deployed for counting in each assembly constituency, VVPAT verification could be completed within five to six hours.

According to the plea, despite the government spending nearly Rs 5,000 crore on the purchase of nearly 24 lakh VVPATs, currently only VVPAT slips from around 20,000 VVPATs are verified.

Highlighting concerns raised by experts regarding VVPATs and EVMs, and the numerous discrepancies between EVM and VVPAT vote counts reported in the past, the petition emphasized the importance of counting all VVPAT slips. It suggested allowing voters to physically place their VVPAT slips in the ballot box to ensure their votes are accurately recorded.

The Supreme Court has issued a notice and included it with pending matters related to the issue.