Plea For 100% VVPAT Verification Of EVM Votes : Live Updates From Supreme Court

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16 April 2024 11:20 AM IST

  • Plea For 100% VVPAT Verification Of EVM Votes : Live Updates From Supreme Court

    The Supreme Court will hear today petitions seeking 100% verification of EVM votes with VVPAT slips.A bench comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta will hear the petitions filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms and others.Responding to the petition filed by ADR, the Election Commission of India had cited practical difficulties in verifying all VVPATs. Earlier, a bench led...

    The Supreme Court will hear today petitions seeking 100% verification of EVM votes with VVPAT slips.

    A bench comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta will hear the petitions filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms and others.

    Responding to the petition filed by ADR, the Election Commission of India had cited practical difficulties in verifying all VVPATs. Earlier, a bench led by Justice Sanjiv Khanna, while hearing ADR's petition, had expressed reservations about the demand for 100% VVPAT verification, saying that it would add to the ECI's burden without much significant advantage.

    Follow this page for live updates from today's hearing.



     

    Live Updates

    • 16 April 2024 1:06 PM IST

      J Datta: please try to explain this mismatch by figures

      J Khanna: when we assemble at 2pm, you can explain to us how the mismatch might happen

    • 16 April 2024 1:05 PM IST

      Bhushan: if there is a mismatch, the protocol is that if the difference in the rest of the constituency other than where there is a mismatch is more than the total number of voters in that polling station then you can ignore the mismatch.

      Otherwise there will be a recount the VVPAT count will prevail over the EVM count 

    • 16 April 2024 1:03 PM IST

      Bhushan: even the Indian SC has said that you have to have a paper trail because EVM cannot be trusted

      That’s why VVPAT is there

      Yet today there is a sample done of only 5 VVPAT machines in every constituency which is roughly only 2% of the slips being counted.

    • 16 April 2024 1:03 PM IST

      Bhushan: these are programmable so you can install a malicious program.

      Most European counties have gone back to paper slips.

      J Khanna: this has not been accepted before, so don’t

      Bhushan: it’s a fact that the German court has said that EVM cannot be trusted

    • 16 April 2024 1:01 PM IST

      J Khanna: the symbol loading is in the flash memory

      Bhushan: yes. Just a few days ago an op poll was published by the Hindu asking whether you trust integrity of the EVM

      J Khanna: please confine yourself to legal arguments

    • 16 April 2024 1:00 PM IST

      Bhushan: in each constituency the order of symbols will be different and the VVPAT has to print the slip with the symbol, a program has to be installed in each machine to tell it that if number 3 button is pressed then show the symbol in the slip.

      So they are programmable chips

    • 16 April 2024 1:00 PM IST

      Bhushan: we aren’t saying they are manipulated or have been. We are saying they CAN be manipulated as both EVM and VVPAT has two kinds of chips.

      First memory in the chip that can be programmed and a flash memory used during symbol loading.

    • 16 April 2024 1:00 PM IST

      J Khanna: okay let’s start EVM

      Adv Prashant Bhushan for petitioners: this matter has come up in Subramaniam Swamy and Chandrababu Naidu, so court made it 1-5 and didn’t go into the integrity of the EVMs

      J Khanna: please be cautious that this has come up before as well

    • 16 April 2024 12:54 PM IST

      Matter taken up.

      J Khanna: there are two specially fixed matters. The EVM matter is first, we’ll take it up now.

      At 2pm, Mr Raju is appearing in around 300 matters regarding GST where we have stayed the arrest.

      We will take the EVM matter first. 

    • 16 April 2024 11:22 AM IST

      Justice Khanna tells Advocate Prashant Bhushan (for ADR) that the matter will be taken around 12-12.15 PM.

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