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The Supreme Court directed the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Wednesday to provide clarification regarding the installation of microcontrollers in either the controlling unit or the VVPAT (Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail) system.

 

A bench led by Justice Sanjiv Khanna requested confirmation on whether the microcontroller utilised in the electoral process is "one-time programmable" or not.

 

Additionally, the Bench, including Justice Dipankar Datta, queried the ECI about the number of symbol loading units available.

 

Addressing the statutory limitation for filing an election petition, set at 45 days under the Representation of the People Act, the Supreme Court inquired if the retention of cast votes needs extension.

 

 Currently, EVM data is retained under the assumption of a 30-day limitation period for filing election petitions.

 

Justice Khanna highlighted the disparity between the actual statutory provision of 45 days in Section 81 of the Representation of the People Act and the prevailing practice, suggesting an extension of data storage accordingly.

 

“During the hearing, the reason given for storage for 45 days was that an election petition has to be filed within 30 days i.e. 15 days extra. But, when we went through Section 81 of the Representation of the People Act, it provides for 45 days. Accordingly, the storage should be extended,” Justice Khanna told ECI and the Centre.

 

Further, the Court sought clarification on whether both the control unit and the VVPAT are sealed, or if only the control unit remains sealed until the vote count.

 

Senior advocate Maninder Singh, representing the ECI, assured the Court that the concerned officials would be present at 2 p.m. to address its technical queries regarding Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).

 

The matter will resume post-lunch for further proceedings.

 

Last week, the Supreme Court reserved its verdict on a series of public interest litigations (PILs) advocating for mandatory cross-verification of votes cast in EVMs with VVPAT slips.

 

In April 2019, the Supreme Court directed the ECI to increase the number of VVPAT slips from one per Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) to five per Assembly constituency.

 

The Court mandated the verification of VVPAT slips from five randomly selected polling stations after the final round of EVM vote counting. VVPAT serves as an independent verification system, allowing voters to confirm the accuracy of their votes.