SC dismisses plea for 100% VVPAT match

The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a plea for 100% matching of VVPATs with EVM vote counts during the counting in general elections 2019, scheduled for May 23.

"A larger bench of Chief Justice of India has already passed the order, no such prayer can be entertained ...you are creating a nuisance," a bench of Justices Arun Mishra and M R Shah told Chennai-based petitioner 'Tech4All'.

"We can't come in the way of people electing their government. Let the country elect its government," the bench said.

The petition filed by Chennai-based 'Tech for All' claimed that there were some design defects in the EVMs, so there must be 100 % verification of EVM votes with the VVPAT.

A lawyer mentioned the matter for early hearing but the court took the petition on board and dismissed it.

The top court had on May 7 rejected a plea by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and 20 other opposition leaders for raising VVPAT match for vote counts in EVMs during general elections 2019.

They wanted the court to reconsider its order of April 8 by which VVPAT match was ordered to be raised from one to five EVMs in per Assembly segment of each Parliamentary constituency.