The Supreme Court has scheduled a hearing for April 16 to consider a series of petitions requesting cross-verification of votes cast with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips. VVPAT serves as an independent vote verification system, allowing voters to confirm if their vote was recorded accurately. It generates a paper slip visible to the voter, kept sealed for potential dispute resolution.
A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta deferred petitions related to Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) to next Tuesday, amid preparations for the seven-phase Lok Sabha polls commencing on April 19.
The court had earlier sought responses from the Election Commission and the Center on pleas advocating for comprehensive VVPAT counting, challenging the current practice of tallying slips from only five randomly selected EVMs per assembly segment.
NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) urged the court to ensure voters can verify that their votes are accurately recorded, emphasizing the importance of transparency and accountability in the electoral process.
The plea highlights the need for voters to verify that their votes are “counted as recorded,” stressing that the existing procedure falls short of ensuring complete voter verifiability, contrary to previous court directives.
