New Delhi: India has been counting paper ballots in elections until the switchover to the electronic voting machines. Yet, the Election Commission on Friday claimed the results will be delayed by six months if 50% of the electronic votes cast are to be tallied with the paper slips from the attached Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines.
Rejecting outright the PIL of 21 opposition parties to tally 50% votes, the EC claimed in an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court that there is no need to increase the VVPAT slips’ counting to match with the EVM results, as the existing system is “fool-proof.”
Also, increasing the paper slip count will cause excessive delay in declaration of the results, since such counting will go on for six months. “There is no need to increase VVPAT count to match it with EVM,” the affidavit said.
It further pointed out that the EC is duty bound to complete the Lok Sabha elections by May 27, which will be disrupted and the new House would not be constituted after the term of the present Lok Sabha ends and this will create a constitutional crisis, if the Opposition’s impractical demand for counting such a large number of paper slips is accepted.
The commission was responding to a notice served by the Supreme Court Bench of Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Deepak Gupta asking it to state why it cannot match more EVM results with the paper trail, chiding it not to insulate itself from suggestions for improvement. The court had admitted the PIL on March 15 and summoned a senior official of the commission for response on Monday.
The opposition parties had referred to the public perception of manipulation of the EVM results, while challenging the EC’s decision to verify the votes with the paper slips in just one randomly selected booth in each constituency, since it will tally only 0.44% of the votes, defeating the very purpose of VVPAT and making its attachment with the EVM just “ornamental.”
The petition had also sought stricter standards and safety norms to ensure there is no tampering of the EVMs as feared by many in the public discourse. The petitioners include the Congress, NCP, DMK, TDP, AAP, CPI, CPI-M, Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, Rashtriya Lok Dal and Sharad Yadav’s Loktantrik Janata Dal.