Supreme Court refuses urgent order on plea for increased VVPAT verification before vote counting

The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to urgently consider a plea for matching VVPAT in increased polling booths in each constituency, saying it can't issue any direction at the last minute before counting of votes in five state Assembly elections.

"We are not interfering, let counting go on as per established practice, procedures and law," a three-judge bench presided over by Chief Justice N V Ramana said.

Senior advocate Meenakshi Arora, appearing for a social activist, Rakesh Kumar, contended that the matter was to be taken up urgently as the counting of Assembly votes in five States would begin on March 10.

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The plea claimed the direction issued by the top court in the case of N Chandra Babu Naidu in 2019 for VVPAT verification at randomly selected polling stations in each constituency was rather inadequate.

The bench, also comprising Justices A S Bopanna and Hima Kohli initially decided to list the matter on Wednesday.

However, on a mention made by senior advocate Maninder Singh on behalf of the Election Commission, the bench took up the case on Tuesday itself.

Singh, for his part, said the petition is not maintainable as the officials have already been trained to follow the 2019 judgment of the Supreme Court with respect to VVPAT verification.

Arora, however, insisted verification of slips should be done in the first or second round of counting, instead of doing it at the end, as the election agents might not be staying till then.

The bench said it could not issue any direction just before the counting of votes. It said the matter would be taken up in the regular course.

VVPAT is a method of providing feedback to voters using EVMs. A VVPAT is intended as an independent verification system for voting machines designed to allow voters to verify that their vote was cast correctly.

The plea sought a direction for increasing randomly selected polling stations for the purpose of mandatory verification of VVPAT paper slips from five to 25 in each Assembly constituency.

The counting of votes in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur is scheduled to take place on Thursday.

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