Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for ADR, told the Court that either the polling process should return to ballot paper or all VVPAT slips should be counted and tallied with the votes shown by EVMs.
“We can go back to paper ballots. Another option is to give VVPAT slip to the voters in hand. Otherwise the slips falls into the machine and the slip can be then given to the voter and it can be put into the ballot box. then the VVPAT design was changed. It had to be a transparent glass but it was changed to dark opaque mirror glass where it is only visible when the light is on for 7 seconds,” he said.
Bhushan also cited the example of Germany.
“What is the population of Germany,” the bench asked.
“5-6 crores,” Bhushan replied.
“97 crores is total number registered voters in India,” the Court pointed out.
Bhushan further said that chips used in EVMs are programmable and many European countries have reverted to ballot paper.
“These are programmable chips. Most European countries have gone back from EVMs to paper ballot,” he said.
“Don’t go to that,” said Justice Khanna.
“It is not disputed, it is fact,” Bhushan maintained.
Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde, who too appeared for one of the petitioners, said that the votes on EVM should be tallied with VVPAT slips.
The bench, however, questioned the practicality of this suggestions.
“ECI says 12 days will be taken to count all the VVPAT Slips,” Senior Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan weighed on.
Bhushan said that currently VVPAT slips are tallied only with respect to 5 EVMs in an assembly segment which was too less.
“They are only counting 5 VVPAT machines per assembly when there are 200 such machines this is 5 percent only and there can be no justification in this. The seven second light can also lead to manipulation. The voter should be allowed to take the VVPAT slip to put it into the ballot box,” he said.
Sankaranarayanan highlighted a report by BloombergQuint as per which there were discrepancies between EVMs and VVPAT slips in 373 constituencies.
“What we are saying that the paper slip falls from the box and we collect that paper slip.. and we see what we have voted for. From the 2019 elections, the BloombergQuint analysed the data on the ECs website to go statewise and this data was pulled from the website later and there were discrepancies in 373 constituencies,” he said.
Senior Advocate Huzefa Ahmadi too said that it is ideal that there is no doubt as regards the election process in the minds of citizens.
“As a voter with stake in democratic process, any residuary doubt, if it can be assuaged in a reasonably practical way must be adopted. The process must not be just fair but also seen to be fair and thus VVPAT can be tallied with the EVM votes counted,” he contended.
It will only add to the prestige of the ECI, he added.
Source: Barandbench
