Supreme Court for more VVPAT matching in Lok Sabha polls
So far, Election Commission has said no to more VVPAT counting.
New Delhi: Disapproving of the Election Commission’s firm stand that it can’t increase the number of constituencies for physical verification of Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT), the Supreme Court on Monday asked the Commission to give reasons on why it was not willing to have VVPAT tested in more than one polling station per Assembly segment.
A bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Deepak Gupta asked the Commission to file an affidavit on this by 4 pm on Thursday. The Bench passed this order in a petition filed by Andhra Pradesh CM N. Chandrababu Naidu and 20 other political leaders who demanded that physical verification of VVPAT must be done for at least 50 per cent of polling stations.
In response to the court’s direction on March 15, deputy election commissioner Sudip Jain was present in court. When the CJI asked Mr Jain, “Will you (EC) be able to increase it? We would like you to increase it”, Mr Jain said it was not necessary to increase it, and it was “not required”.
The CJI told Mr Jain, “If you were so confident, why did you not introduce the VVPAT system on your own? Do you know how much opposition the court faced during the hearing on the introduction of VVPAT? No institution, including the judiciary, should insulate itself from suggestions and improvements.”
Indicating to senior counsel Aryama Sundaram, who appeared for the Commission, that the court wanted to increase the VVPAT verification to more polling stations, the bench directed the Election Commission to file an affidavit setting out reasons why the physical verification of the VVPAT paper trail should not be extended to more than one polling station per Assembly segment.
The affidavit has to be filed by 4 pm on Thursday. The matter will now be heard on April 1.