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"Petitioner places no actionable material before this court to show that ECI has acted in breach of its constitutional mandate as given under Article 324..", the bench has opined
The Supreme Court today dismissed a PIL filed seeking independent audit of the source codes of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM).
CJI DY Chandrachud at the outset told the petitioner that there was no material placed before it to doubt the EVMs.
"What is the material before us to doubt it?", CJI said.
"We are voting on an EVM system whose source code/ brain of EVM machines is not being audited. It not even available on public domain..", further submitted the petitioner.
CJI refuted this submission saying, "It cannot be made available in public domain, that will make it more vulnerable...".
"If we have to make any changes in our database, we need to go through a security audit..there is standard procedure for everything", added the bench also comprising Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra.
Just last year, in a petition filed over party symbols on EVMs, a Supreme Court bench of then CJI U.U. Lalit and Justice Bela. M. Trivedi, had allowed to make a representation before the appropriate authority while refused to exercise its power under Article 32 of the Constitution.
Notably, this year, the Supreme Court 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.
A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Bela M Trivedi sought a reply from the poll panel on the petition filed by 'Association for Democratic Reforms' after hearing advocate Prashant Bhushan on behalf of the NGO.
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.
Case Title: Sunil Ahya vs. ECI
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