Delhi High Court rejects AAP plea on EVMs

Just a couple of days before the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) polls, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) suffered a blow as the Delhi High Court on Friday rejected their plea for the use of the Electronic Voting Machines with Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT ) for the upcoming civic polls.

Justice AK Pathak dismissed the plea which was jointly filed by AAP and one Tahir Hussain demanding that Generation-2 of EVMs with VVPAT should be used for the MCD elections to remove the chances of tampering.

The court observed that it was difficult to replace 13,000 EVMs at the eleventh hour.

Earlier, appearing for the State Election Commission (SEC), its counsel Sumeet Pushkarna had stated that the voting machines are completely safe and cannot be hacked. Also the cost of replacing the machines would be huge.

The court, however, did not say anything about the performance of the machines.

VVPAT is a machine attached to Generation 2 or 3 of EVMs which gives a slip mentioning the name and symbol of the candidate for whom the vote has been cast.

In the petition filed on Tuesday, the petitioners had demanded that the old machines be replaced by the new ones. It alleged that the machines are open to tampering.

This was opposed by the SEC stating that the change of machines sends a wrong message to the voters. It also stated that their is no material given by the petitioners which states that the machines can tampered.

On the argument that the EVMs cannot be procured at the last moment, the petitioners had said that only 15,000 machines were enough for elections in Delhi.