The Supreme Courtroom on Monday issued a discover to the Election Fee on a petition searching for tallying of all Voter Verified Paper Audit Path slips to confirm votes forged via the Digital Voting Machines, Bar and Bench reported.
After a 2019 Supreme Courtroom order, Voter Verified Paper Audit Path slips from solely 5 randomly chosen polling stations in every Meeting section are verified.
Voter Verified Paper Audit Path is a machine that prints a paper slip of the candidate’s identify, serial quantity and the get together’s image after a voter has forged their vote. To keep away from election fraud, it shows the paper slip for seven seconds for the voters to test if their vote has been forged for his or her chosen candidate.
The paper slip then drops all the way down to a locked compartment that solely the polling agent can entry. The slips are usually not handed over to the voters. The collected slips can be utilized to audit voting knowledge saved electronically.
On Monday, a bench of Justices BR Gavai and Sandeep Mehta was listening to a petition that sought verification of every vote forged within the Digital Voting Machine with the Voter Verified Paper Audit Path slips.
The petition challenged the Election Fee’s guideline that mandates verification of Voter Verified Paper Audit Path slips one after the opposite. The plea mentioned that such a course of causes undue delay and steered that the ballot panel ought to as an alternative deploy extra workers and do simultaneous verification of the slips.
The petition contends that the Voter Verified Paper Audit Path slips must be counted meticulously, as consultants have raised issues over Digital Voting Machines. Discrepancies within the Voter Verified Paper Audit Path have additionally been reported previously.
The plea argued that regardless of the federal government spending almost Rs 5,000 crore on almost 24 lakh Voter Verified Paper Audit Path models, solely 20,000 slips are verified by the ballot physique.
Demand for tallying VVPAT slips
Congress chief Jairam Ramesh on Monday mentioned that the court docket’s discover “bears fixed repetition that the Election Fee has refused to fulfill a delegation of INDIA get together leaders who’ve been demanding 100% VVPATs so as to enhance public confidence in EVMs and to make sure the integrity of the electoral course of.”
Ramesh mentioned that the court docket ought to determine on the matter earlier than the Lok Sabha elections start. The primary part of voting is on April 19.
The Supreme Courtroom has issued a discover immediately to the Election Fee on the difficulty of VVPATs.
It bears fixed repetition that the Election Fee has refused to fulfill a delegation of INDIA get together leaders who’ve been demanding 100% VVPATs so as to enhance public…
— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) April 1, 2024
In December, former Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi mentioned that 100% of the Voter Verified Paper Audit Path slips must be verified as a part of the vote counting course of.
“[Counting all VVPAT slips] received’t take greater than a day,” Quraishi had mentioned in a social media submit. “However [this will] restore folks’s confidence. That’s important for credible elections.”
The previous election commissioner was responding to a query by a social media consumer who requested if it will be viable for voters to deposit their Voter Verified Paper Audit Path slips into poll packing containers on the time of voting, and for these slips to be counted later to corroborate the info from the digital voting machines.
On December 3, Quraishi had written in The Telegraph that there’s a “want for critical affirmative motion” by the polling physique to assuage doubts which were raised about India’s digital voting system.
Additionally learn: Will the upcoming Indian election be free and truthful?