Supreme Court dismisses review petition against EVM - VVPAT tally verdict

The Supreme Court has dismissed a review petition challenging its recent decision to reject a plea to tally every Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slip with votes cast through Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) [Arun Kumar Agarwal v. Election Commission of India and Another]..A division bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta was of the view that no case for review of its April 26 judgment has been made out."We have carefully perused the review petition, as also the grounds in support thereof. In our opinion, no case for review of the judgment dated 26.04.2024 is made out. The review petition is, accordingly, dismissed," the Court said..In his review plea, petitioner Arun Kumar Agarwal contended that there were mistakes and errors in the April 26 judgment."It is not correct to state that the result will be unreasonably delayed [by tallying EVM votes with VVPAT slips], or the manpower required will be the double of that already deployed ... Existing CCTV surveillance of counting halls would ensure that manipulation and mischief does not occur in VVPAT slip counting," the review petition said. .On April 26, the top court had dismissed the plea for tallying all VVPATs and EVM votes, while also rejecting a suggestion to go back to a paper ballot-based system of voting instead of having EVMs. The Court had emphasised on the need to nurture a culture of trust and collaboration to strengthen democracy while dismissing the plea. However, it directed the Election Commission of India (ECI) and other authorities to take certain steps to bolster more confidence in EVMs. These measures include the following:- On completion of the symbol loading process, the symbol loading units (SLUs) shall be sealed, the sealed container shall be kept in the strong rooms for 45 days;- All candidates shall have the option to be present at the time of verification. The district election officer shall certify the authenticity of the burnt memory;- Burnt memory in the micro-controller unit is to be checked by a team of engineers..In his review plea against the verdict, Agarwal argued that these measures are note adequate. "The entire discussion on the SLU ignores the fact that SLU is vulnerable and needs to be audited. This Hon’ble Court completely overlooked the possibility that the data in the SLU can have extra bytes other than just the necessary images," the review plea said. The review petitioner added that the April 26 judgment incorrectly noted that presently, 5 per cent of the VVPAT slips are tallied with votes cast, when in practice only 1.97 per cent of VVPAT slips are tallied with EVM votes. .[Read Order]