21 political parties urge apex court to increase matching of paper slips with EVMs to 50 pc
A day after the opposition leaders led by Chandrababu Naidu raised fresh doubts in Mumbai on frequent malfunctioning of electronic voting machines (EVMs) in the ongoing elections, 21 opposition parties filed a review petition in the Supreme Court seeking 50 percent verification of EVMs with corresponding voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) machines.
Hearing the petition filed earlier this month, the court had set aside the opposition's demand of 50 percent but ordered the Election Commission to verify slips of five VVPATs per assembly constituency during the counting of votes of Lok Sabha elections on May 23.
The Supreme Court took the decision on the basis of a report of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) which claimed that the established practice of counting one VVPAT per constituency picked up randomly is good enough sample size and increasing the number of VVPAT machines would lead to delay in the announcement of results. The EC also pleaded that it did not have either the paraphernalia or the time at its hand to train officials to count VVPAT slips.
However, the opposition parties decided to file a review petition on the basis of reports coming from different regions of EVM malfunctioning and allegations that votes were going to a particular political party despite pressing different buttons in all three phases of polls.
The review petition said the defects found in the first phase of polling is a crucial development which strikes at the root of the fundamental right to free and fair elections has taken place subsequent to the passing to the impugned order (in which the court increased the counting from of VVPAT machine from one to five).
To back its claims the petitioner parties also brought to the notice of the Supreme Court state wise computation of defective EVMs/ VVPATs by the Election Commission in the first phase polling. It reflects percentage replacement of 1.07 percent Ballot Units, 0.98 percent control units and 2.18 percent VVPATs.
Bearing the affidavits of 21 political parties the petition pleaded that increase from one to five is not a "reasonable number" and does not result in converting the hitherto ineffective and purposeless random verification exercise to a real, effective and meaningful one.
Asserting that 21 parties electorally represent 70-75 percent of people and thus the issue involved is of immense national importance the joint petition requested the Apex Court to hear the review petition in an open court. A review petition by rule is always heard in chambers.
POLL PANEL STAND
- Election Commission has said that based on inputs from the Indian Statistical Institute, a sample survey of 479 assembly segments would generate 99.99 per cent accuracy.
- The poll panel had also flagged infras-tructure and workforce constraints; it said it needs a minimum team of three officers to count VVPATs.
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