SUPREME COURT ISSUED NOTICE TO ECI ON PLEA FOR 100% EVM VOTERS-VVPAT VERIFICATION

The Supreme Court in the case Arun Kumar Agrawal v. Election Commission of India and Anr., observed and has issued notice on the petition moved seeking inter-alia counting of all Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail, VVPAT paper slips in elections, instead of verification of only 5 randomly selected, the Electronic Voting Machines, EVMs in each assembly segment of a parliamentary constituency.

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The bench comprising of Justice BR Gavai and Justice Sandeep Mehta in the case observed and has passed the petition with another plea filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms seeking similar reliefs.

Further, the petitioner in the plea challenged EC's guideline that mandates that VVPAT verification shall be done sequentially, i.e., one after the other, causing undue delay.

The petitioner in the plea contended that if simultaneous verification is done and a greater number of officers are deployed for counting in each assembly constituency, then complete VVPAT verification can be done in matter of 5-6 hours.