SC bench of Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna to hear plea seeking verification of EVMs

New Delhi, Jan 24 (PTI) A Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna will hear a plea filed by former Haryana minister and five-time MLA Karan Singh Dalal seeking a policy for the verification of Electronic Voting Machines.

When the matter came up for hearing on Friday before Justices Dipankar Datta and Manmohan, the bench said the case shall be placed before the Chief Justice along with similar petitions.

"This can go before the Chief Justice's bench," the bench said.

Dalal has approached the Supreme Court seeking a policy for the verification of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). He has sought compliance of an earlier judgement of the top court delivered in the case of 'Association for Democratic Reforms v. Union of India'.

Dalal and co-petitioner Lakhan Kumar Singla secured the second-highest votes in their respective constituencies and have sought a direction to the Election Commission (EC) to implement a protocol for examining the original "burnt memory" or microcontroller of the four components of the EVM -- the Control Unit, Ballot Unit, VVPAT and Symbol Loading Unit.

The top court in its earlier judgement had mandated that five per cent of the EVMs per assembly constituency should undergo verification by the engineers from EVM manufacturers after the election results are announced.

It was said by the top court that the verification process would be conducted upon a written request from the candidates securing the second or third-highest votes.

The petitioners said the poll panel has failed to issue any such policy, leaving the procedure for burnt memory verification unclear.

According to the petition, the current Standard Operating Procedure (SoP) issued by the Election Commission only involves basic diagnostic tests and mock polls, without scrutinising the burnt memory for tampering. The role of engineers from Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), the manufacturers of EVMs, is reportedly limited to counting VVPAT slips during the mock poll.

The petition said this approach prevents a thorough examination of the machines' integrity.

Dalal and Singla said their petition did not challenge the election results but sought a robust mechanism for EVM verification.

Separate election petitions challenging the results are already pending before the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The petitioners have urged the Supreme Court to direct the ECI to conduct the verification exercise within eight weeks.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 48 out of 90 assembly seats in the recently held elections in Haryana.