New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear next week a review plea filed by 21 Opposition leaders seeking further increase in random matching of VVPAT slips with the electronic voting machines (EVMs) in the ongoing general elections It, however, did not fix a date for the review, leaving it up to the court registry to decide the date.
A bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Deepak Gupta agreed for the hearing next week on a mention by senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi for urgent hearing, underlining that the court will be otherwise closed when the counting of votes takes place.
He submitted that an earlier court order on April 8 on the parties’ petition to increase random matching of five polling booths per assembly segment “does not lead to satisfaction desired by this court.”
Not satisfied, the Opposition leaders led by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu last week sought the review of the apex court’s April order, saying the “increase from 1 to 5 is not a reasonable number and does not lead to satisfaction desired by this court” and instead asked for 50% verification. What is the use of spending crores in installing the VVPAT machines on all EVMs if only fraction of the paper slips are counted, the review petition said.
Referring to earlier observations of the apex court, it had said that the 2 per cent increase in random matching of VVPAT slips with EVMs would not achieve the purpose of raising “public confidence in the integrity of the electoral process”.
The plea has opposed the Election Commission (EC) argument, which was accepted by the court, that as the elections were nearby and hence it would not be viable to increase the number of random matching of VVPAT slips with EVMs.
“It is submitted that, once this court agrees that the number of EVMs that should be subjected to VVPAT verification should be increased to a ‘reasonable number’, not increasing the same to a number which is ‘reasonable’ because it may not be ‘viable’ to do so renders the entire exercise otiose and futile,” the plea has said. Consequently, the ‘viable number’ must also necessarily be reasonable, it had said, alleging that at many booths in Andhra Pradesh the VVPAT machines were not working properly.
(With agency inputs)
