Supreme Court Disposes PIL Seeking Time-Stamped VVPAT Slips, Asks ECI To Examine Proposal

The Bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant, Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi observed that while the issue raised by the petitioner was aimed at strengthening the fairness and transparency of the electoral process, the feasibility of the proposed measures fell within the policy and technical domain of the Election Commission.

“The issue raised by the petitioner is in furtherance of the fairness and transparency of the election process. However, whether the prayers made by the petitioner are feasible or not is essentially a technical or policy issue that falls within the domain of the Election Commission of India,” the Court said.

Accordingly, the bench directed the Registry to forward the entire paper book to the ECI and ordered that it be treated as a representation on behalf of the petitioner. The writ petition and all pending applications were disposed of without any opinion being expressed on the merits of the proposal.

What the Petition Sought

Filed under Article 32 of the Constitution as a public interest litigation, the petition sought directions to the Election Commission to modify existing VVPAT-related guidelines, manuals, instructions and standard operating procedures by mandatorily incorporating the exact time of recording of each vote on every VVPAT slip generated through Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).

The petitioner argued that while Rule 49M of the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961 requires VVPAT slips to display the serial number, name and symbol of the candidate, it does not provide for recording the exact time when a vote is cast.

According to the plea filed through AoR Satish Kumar, this omission creates a “significant audit gap” because “the physical paper trail itself remains silent on the exact time at which the vote was cast and recorded.”

The petition clarified that it did not seek a return to paper ballots, 100 per cent VVPAT counting, or interference with any concluded election. Instead, it described the relief sought as a “prospective, systemic, minimal and technically implementable safeguard” aimed at strengthening “transparency, accountability, verifiability and public confidence in the electoral process.”

Concerns Over Auditability and Verification

The petitioner contended that exact time-stamping would serve as a neutral audit marker capable of assisting the Election Commission and courts in examining issues such as polling-hour irregularities, late-hour voting surges, turnout revisions, booth-level discrepancies and complaints concerning mismatches between votes cast and VVPAT slips.

It was argued that while Form 17A records voter participation, Form 17C records vote accounts, the Control Unit stores vote totals and VVPAT slips record the selected candidate, none of these mechanisms presently provide a direct paper-trail record of the precise time at which a vote was cast.

The plea further sought directions for secure preservation of time-stamped VVPAT slips and related records, particularly where complaints, verification requests or election petitions are pending. It also requested the framing of a nationwide protocol governing preservation of chain-of-custody records, seal records, strong-room logs, videography records and other election-related documentation.

Reliance on Earlier Judgments

The petition relied on a series of Supreme Court judgments recognising the significance of VVPATs in ensuring electoral integrity. It referred to Dr. Subramanian Swamy v. Election Commission of India, where the Court recognised the paper trail as an “indispensable requirement” of free and fair elections, and N. Chandrababu Naidu v. Union of India, where mandatory VVPAT verification was increased from one polling station to five polling stations per Assembly constituency.

The petitioner maintained that adding exact time-stamping to VVPAT slips would be “a small but constitutionally significant step” towards making the existing paper-trail mechanism more reliable, verifiable and useful in judicial scrutiny of electoral disputes.