Supreme Court refuses to urgently hear plea for tallying of VVPAT and EVM votes

The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to urgently hear a plea seeking directions that Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips must be tallied with votes cast through Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). [Association for Democratic Reforms v. Election Commission of India and ors].A Bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and SVN Bhatti reiterated that the petitioner should not be over-suspicious of the election process, and listed the matter for hearing in November."How many times will this issue be raised? Every six months. There is no urgency. We will hear in due course. Every year, a fresh petition is filed about this. There are other urgent matters. If any elections are held in the interim, so be it. This is not a criminal case. Please," Justice Khanna orally remarked..The plea filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) says that VVPAT slips must be tallied with votes cast through EVMs so that citizens can confirm that their vote has been ‘counted as recorded’ and ‘recorded as cast.'Appearing for ADR before the top court today, Advocate Prashant Bhushan pointed out that assembly elections for some states are due in November. He, therefore, urged the Court to hear the matter after two weeks."They have admitted to errors in their counter, it has misleading statements. Lordships may not make the matter infructuous," he submitted.The Court, however, declined the urgently hear the matter and listed the case for consideration in November..In July this year, the Supreme Court had remarked that public interest litigation (PIL) regarding the election processes in the country sometimes cast too much suspicion on the sanctity of the election process.In April 2019, the top court had raised the number of EVMs with respect to which VVPAT paper trail had to be verified from 1 EVM to 5 EVMs per assembly segment or assembly constituency. That order was passed on a petition filed by leaders of various political parties who sought the physical verification of the VVPAT paper trails for at least 50 per cent of polling stations.In May 2019, the Court had dismissed a plea filed by some technocrats seeking VVPAT verification of all EVMs..Are we not sometimes over-suspicious? Supreme Court on PIL to tally EVM votes with VVPAT slips