Plea in Supreme Court seeks review of EVM VVPAT verdict

A plea has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking a review of its 26 April judgement by which it had rejected the demand for reverting to the old paper ballot system and the complete cross-verification of votes cast using EVMs with a Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT).

The review petition was filed by Arun Kumar Agrawal, who had filed the PIL on the issue earlier, through lawyer Neha Rathi.

On 26 April, a bench of justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta had termed the suspicion of manipulation of the EVMs "unfounded" and trashed the demand for reverting to the old paper ballot system. It had said that the polling devices were "secure" and eliminated booth capturing and bogus voting.

However, the judgement had opened a window for aggrieved unsuccessful candidates securing second and third places in poll results and allowed them to seek verification of micro-controller chips embedded in five per cent Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) per Assembly constituency on a written request upon payment of a fee to the poll panel.

It had directed that from 1 May, the symbol loading units (SLU) should be sealed and secured in a container and stored in a strongroom along with the EVMs for a minimum period of 45 days post-declaration of results.

By the judgement, the top court had dismissed the PILs which had also sought a direction to return to the ballot paper system.