New Delhi. The Supreme Court has rejected the petition seeking matching of VVPAT slips and all the votes cast in EVMs. The Supreme Court has said in its decision that elections will not be conducted through ballot paper. Elections will be held through EVM only. The Supreme Court has asked the Election Commission to seal the symbol loading unit. The Supreme Court has asked to keep VVPAT slips safe for 45 days. The court has directed the Election Commission that after the results of the concerned seat are declared, the engineers of the EVM manufacturing companies will examine them. For this, the candidate will have to apply within 7 days of the result being declared.
Justice Khanna : The burnt memory semicontroller in 5% of the EVMs that is the Control Unit, Ballot Unit and the VVPAT per assembly constituency per parliamentary constituency shall be checked and verified by a team of engineers from the manufacturers of the EVM post the…
— Live Law (@LiveLawIndia) April 26, 2024
The Supreme Court had also asked many important questions to the Election Commission during the hearing in this case. The Supreme Court had asked whether there is a microcontroller installed in the control unit or VVPAT? The second important question of the court was whether the microcontroller is once programmable? The third question the Supreme Court asked the Election Commission was how many symbol loading units are available? The fourth question of the Supreme Court was that the time limit for filing election petition is 30 days. In this way the Election Commission keeps the storage and records for 45 days, but under the law the time limit for election petition is 45 days? The Supreme Court had told the Election Commission that you have to fix it. The Supreme Court had also asked how does VVPAT work? The petitioners in the Supreme Court had also demanded reversal of the Election Commission’s 2017 decision to replace the transparent glass in VVPAT machines with opaque glass. When the light comes on in the VVPAT, the voter can see for only 7 seconds whether the party or candidate he voted for is correct or not.
The petitioners made many allegations against EVMs and VVPATs. The Election Commission declared all these wrong in the Supreme Court. The Election Commission also told the court that if all the VVPAT slips are matched, it may take 10 to 13 days for the election results to be declared. At the same time, on the demand of holding elections through ballot paper, Supreme Court Justice Sanjeev Khanna and Justice Dipankar Dutta had clearly said that everyone has seen what used to happen earlier when elections were held through ballot paper. On this demand, he had said that the election process in India is a big task and there should be no attempt to spoil the system. Last Wednesday, while reserving its verdict in this matter, the Supreme Court had remarked that it cannot control elections nor act as a controller for a constitutional body. The court had said that there are provisions for consequences under the law against wrongdoers. The court cannot give orders merely on the basis of doubt.