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Synopsis

On Friday, a Supreme Court division bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and SVN Bhatti asked the petitioners in a plea seeking cross verification of votes in EVMs through the VVPATs, to not be overly suspicious.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan appearing for petitioner told the bench that if only 2 per cent of EVMs were currently cross-verified and even if 10 per cent had a problem, then the chance of one of those EVMs being picked out of five randomly selected EVMs is only 40 per cent.

Hearing this, Justice Khanna said, "We are becoming over-suspicious."

The bench further observed that this cross-verification exercise would only increase the Election Commission's work without providing any substantial advantage.

Recently, the Election Commission of India (ECI) had informed the Supreme Court that there is no 'fundamental right' of the voter to verify through VVPATs, that their vote has been 'recorded as cast' and 'counted as recorded'. 

In an affidavit, it stated that the provisions of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961 do not violate any fundamental right and in fact the concerned provisions have undergone judicial scrutiny at many occasions and their constitutionality has been upheld time and again.

The poll panel termed the instat plea filed by NGO Association For Democratic Reforms (ADR) led by advocate Prashant Bhushan for raising the number of VVPATs verification as "misconceived and devoid of merits" and a "regressive thought". 

"The present petition is a yet another attempt to cast doubt over the functioning of EVMs/VVPATS with vague and baseless grounds. The EC anticipates that the present petition casting aspersion over the EVM/VVPAT system will not be the last of such petitions before the Lok Sabha Elections, 2024," the EC in a lengthy affidavit of 469-page filed on September 4.

In July, the top court had sought a response from Election Commission on a plea by an NGO to cross verify the count in EVMs with votes that have been verifiably ‘recorded as cast’ by the voters themselves, through the VVPATs.

The plea also 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 claimed that during the 2019 General Elections, there were EC acknowledged instances, where there was variance in the results captured in the EVMs and that of the VVPATs. 

The NGO claimed during mandatory verification of paper slips of VVPAT of five 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. 

Case Title: Association of Democratic Reforms vs. Election Commission of India and Anr.