New Delhi : The Supreme Court is set to provide directions on Wednesday regarding a set of petitions advocating for the compulsory cross-verification of votes cast in Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) with Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips.
According to the causelist posted on the apex court’s website, the matter is scheduled before a bench comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta “for directions” on April 24.
During the previous week, the Bench had reserved its judgment on a series of public interest litigations (PILs) related to the issue. It observed that official acts are generally presumed to be valid under the Indian Evidence Act, and not everything done by the Election Commission can be doubted. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, the second highest law officer of the Centre, criticized the petitioners for frequently filing PILs on the eve of elections, suggesting that it trivializes the democratic choice of voters.
The SG also noted that the Supreme Court had already settled the matter by dismissing similar pleas seeking relief in the past.
In April 2019, the Supreme Court directed the Election Commission of India (ECI) to increase the number of VVPAT slips from one EVM per Assembly constituency to five. It issued guidelines mandating the verification of VVPAT slips from five randomly selected polling stations after completing the final round of EVM vote counting.
VVPAT serves as an independent verification system for voting machines, enabling voters to confirm whether their votes have been accurately recorded.
