SC Dismisses New Plea For 100% VVPAT Verification

The  vacation bench of the Supreme Court today dismissed a petition filed seeking 100% verification of the Voter Verified Paper Audited Trails(VVPAT) with the Electronic Voting Machines(EVM).

"The CJI had dealt with this matter. Why are you taking chance before a two-judge vacation bench," the apex court asked.

"We cannot override the CJI's order... This is nonsense. The petition is taken on board. Dismissed," Justice Mishra said.

The petition was filed by a collective of technocrats named "Tech4All" stating the EVMs are not reliable and vulnerable to tampering. As a long term solution, they sought for replacement of EVMs with Optical Ballot Scan machines. With regard to the present general elections, they sought for subjecting all EVMs to VVPAT verification.

However, the bench of Justices Arun Mishra and M R Shah did not find any merit in the plea and dismissed it.

Earlier, the SC had directed the Election Commission of India to increase VVPAT verification to one EVM to five EVMs in each assembly segment of a parlimanetary constituency.

This was ordered in a petition filed by leaders of 21 political parties. Though they had sought a review of this order later by seeking increase up to 50% verification, the Court dismissed it. 

With PTI inputs