The Supreme Court today dismissed a petition seeking 100% matching of the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) with the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) during the counting of votes on 23rd May and termed it nonsense.
The petition filed by a Chennai based organization called “Tech for All” was presented before a vacation Bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra. It also demanded the EVMs be replaced with optical ballot scan machines for future elections, which allow voters to manually mark their vote on a paper ballot, which in turn, is scanned for electronic tabulation.
Justice Mishra refused to entertain the plea saying that the matter has already been dealt with by a larger Bench headed by CJI Ranjan Gogoi. He said democracy would suffer if they kept doing this. “The CJI had dealt with this matter. Why are you taking a chance before a two-judge vacation Bench? We cannot override the CJI’s order. This is nonsense. The petition is taken on board. Dismissed,” said the court.
“We won’t entertain such a plea over and over again. Can’t come in the way of people electing their representatives. Let country elect its government,” the court commented.
Earlier this month the court had dismissed a review petition of 21 opposition parties seeking revision of court decision regarding verification of voting by VVPAT. Last month the Court had directed the Election Commission to increase the number of polling booths per constituency from 1 to 5 for matching the VVPAT slips with EVMs.
The result of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections is yet to be declared but the opposition parties have already started ranting about EVMs since the exit polls declared their numbers.