Top court hears challenges against ECI’s standard operating procedure for vote verification
VVPATs for Voter VerificationJudges: Sanjiv Khanna CJI, Dipankar Datta J
Today, a Special Bench of Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta heard a batch of petitions seeking compliance with the Supreme Court’s 2024 VVPATs for Voter Verification judgement. Advocate Prashant Bhushan appeared for the Association for Democratic Reforms, a non–profit and the lead petitioner in the case which sought for 100 percent vote verification through VVPATs. The same bench had rejected the plea in April 2024.
Senior Advocate Devadatt Kamat appeared Sarv Mitter, a member of the Congress party contesting in Haryana. Senior Advocate Maninder Singh argued for the Election Commission of India.
Petitioners: No verification by engineers under ECI’s SOP
Bhushan argued that the ECI’s standard operating procedure (SOP) to check tampering of the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) did not conform with the Court’s judgement. He explained that when a person attempts to check the EVM, the SOP clears the data on the EVM and then a mock poll is conducted to verify the vote. “If the votes are going to the right candidates [in the mock poll], that shows that the machine was fine…this is what in essence their SOP is saying,” Bhushan said.
Adding to Bhushan, Kamat highlighted that the cost per mock poll was ₹40,000 per machine and that a single EVM costs at least ₹30,000. Mitter, he said, had to pay about ₹4.5 lakhs to check all machines for the ECI to conduct a mock poll.
Bushan and Kamath also argued that according to the Court’s 2024 decision, EVMs should be examined by technical engineers to see if the software and the hardware have any “elements of manipulation or not”. However, this was not followed. CJI Khanna questioned whether the paper trail was still available even after a vote was cast. Bhushan responded in the affirmative. The paper trails are slips which contain details of the candidate and the vote.
ECI: Petitioners do not have the “right to say anything”
Singh, appearing for the ECI, firmly challenged the maintainability of the petitions. He pointed out that the same “group of advocates” had filed a similar petition for former Haryana MLA Karan Singh Dalal and had withdrawn it without permission to file a fresh petition. Singh alleged that the petitioners were moving from bench to bench, prompting CJI Khanna to also remark that “it is a little odd that the same counsels appear” in different petitions.
Senior Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan appearing for Dalal, pointed out that their new petition had different prayers and that the fresh petition had been transparent about the withdrawn petition. “That is craft drafting…We are not accusing you of suppression”, responded Justice Datta, quickly adding, that a new writ petition could not be filed if an older petition was withdrawn without seeking permission to file a new one, according to Order 23 Rule 1(3) of the Civil Procedure Code.
Bench: Judgement only directed to test the tampering of EVMs
CJI Khanna directed the ECI to file its response to the petitions, adding that ₹40,000 was “too high” a cost. The Chief also stated that the 2024 judgement intended for an engineer to check if there was any tampering with the EVM, suggesting that the deletion of data to conduct a mock poll was not the essence of the judgement.
The bench directed that the case will be heard in the week commencing from 3 March 2025. The bench also directed the ECI to file an affidavit explaining the rationale behind the SOP. “We are just trying to see what is the right way,” CJI Khanna said.