The Election Commission has closed its doors to a suggestion by Opposition parties that half the votes cast on electronic voting machines be counted by way of voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) slips.
Implementing the demand of the 21 parties will not only require additional trained personnel and adequate space, but will also delay the announcement of results by six to eight days, the Commission said in its affidavit filed in the Supreme Court on Friday.
Earlier in the week, the court had directed the poll panel to consider increasing the counting sample of the voting slips as a measure of "satisfaction". It was not happy with the current system by which VVPAT slips from one polling station, picked randomly in each assembly segment of a parliamentary constituency, are counted. The EC's response will be considered on Monday by a bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi.
Describing the maths, the EC said that in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, there are 10.35 lakh polling stations across 4,125 assembly segments.
On an average, there are 250 polling stations in each assembly constituency. Counting of VVPAT slips of one polling station takes an hour on the average. To count those of 50 per cent of the polling stations in an assembly segment would take roughly 125 hours, or more than five days.
If the counting of slips is undertaken round wise, the process may get delayed by another 10 to 12 hours.
So on an average, six days would be consumed in counting before the results could be announced.
In constituencies with 400 polling stations, the count could extend to as many as nine days, the EC said.
Then there is the logistical issue. Currently, the slips are counted by trained personnel in specially designed VVPAT Counting Booths (VCBs), which are like cash counters at banks, functioning under the direct oversight of the election observer.
To replicate this process in half of all polling stations, the EC has neither the training nor the capacity building for generating this workforce. There is also the question of erecting VCBs, for which getting larger counting halls in all states will be a challenge.
Moreover, voting slips are manually counted and the possibility of human error cannot be discounted, particularly if the count overrides the data generated from the EVM. This would lead to repeat counting, if the petitioners' proposal is accepted, adding to the delay.
The EC also quoted a scientific report it received from the Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi on March 22. The study concluded that VVPAT verification of 479 EVMs out of 10.35 lakh can achieve a confidence level of 99.9936 per cent.
The EC informed that the present rule covers 4,125 EVMs and VVPATs, which is 8.6 times the sample size recommended by the report.
Since the introduction of VVPATs as a verification step in the vote counting system in May 2017, 1,500 polling stations have been randomly verified and not one mismatch has been recorded.
Rules already provide for the counting of VVPAT slips if there is a complaint of discrepancy between the results shown by the EVM and those reflected by the printed paper slips, the EC added.