Supreme Court During VVPAT Case Hearing

The Supreme Court today said it is not the controlling authority for elections and cannot dictate the functioning of Election Commission, a constitutional authority. The remarks came during the hearing on petitions seeking thorough cross-verification of votes cast on Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) with paper slips generated through the VVPAT system. The court has reserved the judgment for now. The bench of Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Dipankar Datta said it cannot act on mere suspicion.

Responding to concerns raised by Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for petitioner Association for Democratic Reforms, the court said, “If you are predisposed about a thought-process, then we cannot help you… we are not here to change your thought process.”

Amid apprehensions regarding EVMs, the petitions seek a direction to cross-verify every vote cast on EVMs with the paper slips generated by the VVPAT system. Currently, this cross-verification is done for five randomly selected EVMs in every Assembly constituency.

In the earlier hearings, the petitioners raised the issue of public trust and drew comparisons with European countries that have gone back to the ballot voting system. The court shot down such comparisons, observing that the challenges here are different. The Election Commission, on its part, stressed that the current system is foolproof.