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Supreme Court junks plea to verify all votes

Terming the petition to be "nonsense", the bench said that the issue had engaged sufficient attention of the Court on two recent occasions and to now stand in the way of the declaration of election results was unnecessary.

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Less than 48 hours to go for counting of votes to begin, the Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to hear a petition demanding 100 per cent matching of VVPAT slips with the digital votes generated by the electronic voting machines (EVM). Terming the petition to be "nonsense", the bench said that the issue had engaged sufficient attention of the Court on two recent occasions and to now stand in the way of the declaration of election results was unnecessary.

The petition was filed by a group of engineers from Chennai, christened as Tech4All. The group pointed out that till the third phase of elections, in 49 seats out of 303 Lok Sabha constituencies, EVM malfunctioning was widely reported. The group said this was to do with the technology used in these machines. As an alternative, the petitioner body suggested replacing EVMs with Optical Ballot Scan machine which upholds the "tangible secret ballot system" that is verifiable by a common man too.

But till such time the EVMs are to be used, the petitioner urged the Court to consider 100 per cent verification of EVMs with the voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) slips.

The Vacation Bench of Justices Arun Mishra and MR Shah found no substance in doubting an exercise already undertaken by the apex bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) in April this year. The bench said, "You cannot ask the same relief that was listed previously before another bench." The Court was referring to a petition by 21 Opposition parties demanding at least 50 per cent verification of EVMs with VVPATs. It was on their petition, the Court agreed to raise the current verification from one polling station in each assembly segment of a LS seat to five polling stations.

The bench while dismissing the petition said, "This is nonsense that you are seeking. People have a right to elect the right government of their choice. Can you come in the way of these results being declared?" The Court further indicated that the Court revisited this issue on May 7 when the CJI-led bench heard review petitions by the 21 Opposition parties and turned down the demand for even 25 per cent verification of EVM with VVPAT slips.

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