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Plea For 100% EVM-VVPAT Verification : Supreme Court Seeks Clarifications From ECI | LIVE UPDATES

LIVELAW NEWS NETWORK

24 April 2024 3:17 AM GMT

    • Plea For 100% EVM-VVPAT Verification : Supreme Court Seeks Clarifications From ECI | LIVE UPDATES

    The Supreme Court will pass orders today on petitions seeking complete verification of the votes recorded in the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips.A bench comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta will pronounce the order at 10. 30 AM. The bench had reserved the judgment on April 18.During the hearing, the bench...

    The Supreme Court will pass orders today on petitions seeking complete verification of the votes recorded in the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips.

    A bench comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta will pronounce the order at 10. 30 AM. The bench had reserved the judgment on April 18.

    During the hearing, the bench extensively interacted with an official from the Election Commission of India (ECI) to understand the working of the EVMs and VVPATs and their security features. The ECI asserted that the EVMs cannot be tampered with under any circumstance and that the complete counting of the VVPAT slips was not practically feasible.

    The writ petitions have been filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), Abhay Bhakchand Chhajed and Arun Kumar Aggarwal.

    The petitioners, stressing that the measures to increase the confidence of the voters must be adopted, argued that a few days delay in the declaration of results in a small price to pay for the larger goal of fair and transparent election process. During the hearing, the bench also orally expressed reservations about the manual counting process, saying that human interventions can lead to problems.

    As per the current practice, the ECI randmoly verifies the VVPAT slips of EVMs from five polling booths per assembly segment in a Parliamentary constituency. This is in terms of a direction passed by the Supreme Court in 2019 which directed the ECI to increase the verification from one polling booth to five polling booths per assembly segment.

    Follow this page for live updates.



    Live Updates

    2024-04-24 03:17:36
    • 24 April 2024 9:00 AM GMT

      Justice Datta : Till date there is no report of any such incident. We cannot control the election Mr.Bhushan, we cannot control another constitutional authority.

    • 24 April 2024 9:00 AM GMT

      Justice Khanna : They are not loading any program. They are loading a symbol which is an image file.

      Bhushan : If a malicious program is loaded along with the symbol...

      J Khanna : We will take care of that, we have understood the argument.

    • 24 April 2024 8:58 AM GMT

      Bhushan : The stand that flash memory is not reprogrammable..

      J Khanna : They are not saying that. They are saying flash memory has no program and only symbols. They are storing symbols not software. As far as microcontorller in the CU is concerned, it is agnostic, it doesn't recognize party name or candidte name. What it recognises is the buttons on the Ballot Unit. Buttons in the BU are interchangeable. Manufacturer doesn't know which party is going to be allotted which button.

    • 24 April 2024 8:56 AM GMT

      Bhushan : They admit that signal flows from the Ballot Unit to the VVPAT and from VVPAT to the control unit. If in the VVPAT flash memory, there is a malicious program...

      J Khanna : That argument we have understood. They say flash memory is not loaded with any program but with symbols only.

    • 24 April 2024 8:54 AM GMT

      Justice Khanna : Therefore we asked them and they say they are using One Time Programmable.

      Bhushan : Flash memory is always reprogrammable.

      J Khanna : We have to rely on them (ECI) on technical data.

    • 24 April 2024 8:54 AM GMT

      Bhushan : This microcontroller has a flash memory also. So to say that his microcontroller is not reprogrammable is not correct. This is what computer experts also say.

    • 24 April 2024 8:50 AM GMT

      Prashant Bhushan : That the processor chip in EVM is one-time programmable is in doubt.

      Justice Khanna : He has clarified the doubt.

      Bhushan : The manufacturer in RTI reply has admitted that this chip is used. Manufacturer is one AnnexP company. We downloaded the characteristics of microcontroller from the manufacturer website.

    • 24 April 2024 8:48 AM GMT

      ECI : After the polling, all three (BU, CU, VVPAT) are sealed.

    • 24 April 2024 8:46 AM GMT

      ECI : All the machines are stored for 45 days. On the 46th day, CEO writes to Registrars of concerned HCs to ascertain if any election petition filed. If any Election Petition is filed, the machines remain stored.

    • 24 April 2024 8:45 AM GMT

      ECI : Regarding the number of Symbol Loading Units (SLU) ECIL has 1400 SLUs and BHEL has 3400 SLUs

      (Note : approx numbers mentioned in the tweet).

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