The Supreme Court bench comprising Justices Sanjeev Khanna and Dipankar Datta has sought clarification from the Election Commission regarding a petition filed to verify the VVPAT (Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail) slips with the EVM (Electronic Voting Machine) votes.
The Commission is scheduled to present its statement on this matter before the two-judge bench of the Supreme Court at 2 PM today. It is noteworthy that during the hearing of this case in the morning, the petitioner had raised the issue of the EVM source code. The Supreme Court had stated that this matter could not be made public under any circumstances, as it might lead to misuse.
Regarding the VVPAT slip, we seek clarification on certain matters. Is the microcontroller controlling the unit or integrated with the VVPAT? The officials of the Election Commission should communicate by 2 PM. Additionally, the Supreme Court bench also inquired whether the microcontroller is used only once. The court also sought clarification regarding the symbol loading unit and information related to the storage of EVMs.
In the morning session of the judicial bench, it was stated that it is not appropriate to doubt everything. One should not be skeptical about all matters. If the organization has done some good work, it must be acknowledged. It is not right to criticize every issue. It should be noted that the demand to match the EVM and VVPAT slips has been a long-standing one.
Esteemed lawyer Arun Kumar Agarwal had filed a case in the Supreme Court regarding this demand. According to the current rules during the counting of votes, the votes from the EVMs of any five polling stations in a legislative assembly constituency are matched with the VVPAT slips. The petitioner argues that there are allegations of discrepancies between the data from the VVPAT and the votes recorded in the EVMs. Therefore, all VVPAT slips should be counted.
