New Delhi: The Supreme Court of India will pronounce today, April 24, certain directions on a batch of petitions seeking complete cross-verification of votes cast using EVMs with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT). The VVPAT is an independent vote verification system that enables electors to witness if their votes have been cast correctly.
The seven-phase Lok Sabha elections 2024 began on April 19. Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), an NGO, and one of the petitioners sought a reversal of the Election Commission of India’s 2017 decision to replace the transparent glass on VVPAT machines with an opaque glass. With this change, now the voters can see the slip only for 7 seconds when the light remains on.
Further, the ADR sought to match the count in EVMs with votes that have been verifiably recorded as cast and to ensure that voters can verify through the VVPAT slip. During the hearing that lasted for two long days, the apex court noted that voter satisfaction and trust are at the core of the electoral process. For this purpose, the court interacted with Deputy Election Commissioner Nitesh Kumar Vyas for nearly an hour to understand the functioning of EVMs.
Earlier on April 18, the Supreme Court bench comprising Justices Dipankar Datta and Sanjiv Khanna reserved the order.
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