The Election Commission of India on Thursday informed the Supreme Court that allegations of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) showing one extra vote during a mock poll in Kerala’s Kasaragod were false.
The top court was hearing a batch of pleas seeking complete cross-verification of votes cast using EVMs with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT), an independent vote verification system which enables an elector to see whether his vote was cast correctly.
“These news reports are false. We have verified the allegation from the district collector and it appears that they are false. We will submit a detailed report to the court,” senior deputy election commissioner Nitesh Kumar Vyas told a bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta.
Vyas was present in the courtroom to apprise the bench about the functioning of EVMs.
Earlier during the day, the top court asked senior advocate Maninder Singh, appearing for the Election Commission, to look into the issue after advocate Prashant Bhushan flagged the anomaly.
Bhushan, who is appearing for petitioner NGO ‘Association for Democratic Reforms’, told the court that there were reports about EVMs showing one extra vote during a mock poll exercise.
The CPI(M)-led LDF said on Thursday that it would lodge a complaint with the Election Commission over a few voting machines allegedly having recorded votes wrongly in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate during a mock poll conducted in Kasaragod Lok Sabha constituency.
Senior CPI(M) leader KP Satheesh Chandran alleged that there were instances where two or three voting machines exhibited such errors during the mock poll on Wednesday, and a complaint will be filed before the EC.
Advocate for one of the petitioner raises the bogey of Fundamental Rights. Justice Sanjiv Khanna said voter has no ‘fundamental right’ to get his/her vote verified through VVPATs, that their vote has been ‘recorded as cast’ and ‘counted as recorded’. “All FRs can be curtailed there are exceptions FRs are not absolute,” Justice Sanjiv Khanna said.
Justice Sanjiv Khanna asked senior advocate Maninder Singh, who was appearing for ECI, “Please explain to us the whole process. How VVPAT is calibrated, what stage candidates can examine if required, guarantee there can be no possibility of tampering, changes in chips, retrieval of data.”
Advocate Singh, who appeared for ECI, said, “Every issue had been dealt with earlier by this court and order pronounced. I am taking the plea of res judicata.”
In reply to this, Justice Dipankar Datta said: “We are just saying you allay all apprehension as it is an electoral process. Has sanctity. Leave no doubt. Let no one inside court, outside the court have any apprehension.”
CPI(M) leader MV Balakrishnan is contesting against Congress leader and current Kasaragod MP Rajmohan Unnithan and BJP’s ML Ashwini in the constituency for the April 26 Lok Sabha polls.
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