Review plea filed in SC against order rejecting petition to cross verify vote counts of EVMs with VVPAT

New Delhi: A plea has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking review of its April 26 judgment which had rejected a petition to cross verify all the vote counts of EVMs with VVPATs from existing five machines per assembly constituency or assembly segment in a parliamentary constituency, or to return to old ballot system.

The review petition has been filed by advocate Neha Rathi on behalf of petitioner Arun Kumar Agrawal.

It claimed there are mistakes and errors apparent on the face of the order of April 26, 2024, and as such there were sufficient reasons which required its review.

"Electronic voting machines do not allow voters to verify that their votes have been accurately recorded. Furthermore, given their very nature, electronic voting machines are especially vulnerable to malicious changes by insiders such as designers, programmers, manufacturers, maintenance technicians, etc," the petition said.

It said presently 5 per cent of the VVPAT paper slips are tallied with votes cast. The said figure is factually incorrect and in fact, less than 2 per cent of the VVPAT slips are counted for verification of EVMs. The said fact was also orally pointed out by petitioners during the course of hearing of the instant case.

There are 10.48 lakhs booths. It is an admitted fact that there are 4123 assembly segments. Thus, the average booth per Assembly constituency is 10.48 lakhs/ 4123 = 254 and in one Assembly constituency 5 booths are counted. Hence the percentage of VVPAT counted is 500/254 which comes out to be only 1.97 per cent and not 5 per cent as noted in Para 10 and 11 of the concurring judgment, the plea said.

The petitioner also claimed the system loading units of the EVMs, saying the entire discussion on it ignored the fact that it is vulnerable and needs to be audited.

"The court completely overlooked the possibility that the data in the SLU can have extra bytes other than just the necessary images. The same has been dealt in detail in an article written by Madhav Deshpande, published on April 27, 2024 in the Wire," it said.

The petitioner also said it is not correct to state that the result will be unreasonably delayed, or the manpower required will be the double of that already deployed for counting all VVPATs.