EC should count all VVPAT slips in case of discrepancy during verification: Naidu after SC snub

TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu on Tuesday said he will approach the Election Commission (EC) requesting counting of all the Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPATs) in an Assembly segment in case any discrepancy or mismatch is found in any of the five VVPATs-EVMs are that are required to be verified.

He made this comments to reporters after the Supreme Court turned down a review plea by 21 opposition parties seeking a direction to increase random physical verification of VVPATs from five to at least 50 per cent of EVMs.

The review petition was filed after the Supreme Court on April 8 directed the ECI to increase physical counting of VVPAT slips to 5 random EVMs in each constituency. Earlier, only VVPAT slips from one EVM in every Assembly segment or constituency was subjected to physical verification.

"Our review petition has been dismissed. We are demanding transparency in the election process. We have spent Rs 9000 crore on VVPAT then why can't you count it and make it more transparent," Naidu told reporters.

"We are again going to EC. We demand that if any discrepancy or mismatch is found in any one of the five VVPATs-EVMs that are required to be matched in an Assembly segment then counting of all VVPATs should be done. We will ask Election Commission to revise its guidelines," said Naidu.

Senior advocate AM Singhvi, appearing for the petitioners, told the Apex Court that increasing random matching of VVPAT slips with EVMs to only five polling booths per assembly segment amounted to tallying just 2 per cent of total VVPAT machines, while they were asking for 25 per cent.