Supreme Court asks EC to increase VVPAT audit, verify 5 random EVM's per constituency

The Supreme Court has asked the Election Commission to increase the random verification of Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail in the upcoming General Elections of 2019.

The Election Commission, in its notification had earlier said that only one EVM per assembly segment will be taken up for VVPAT paper slip matching. But, as of now, the apex court has ordered the poll watch dog to increase the sampling of EVM’s across the constituencies.

News agency ANI tweeted, “Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi says 'increasing the VVPAT verification from one EVM per constituency to five is to ensure the greatest degree of accuracy, satisfaction in election process and not only political parties but the poor should be satisfied.”

The 21 Opposition leaders had earlier approached the Election Commission with a request that 50% of the VVPAT should be verified and cross checked but it was rejected by the poll watchdog. Thereafter, the leaders filed a plea in the Supreme Court seeking an intervention in the matter.

The Election Commission, while filing its response in the apex court had said that, the result declaration of the General Election would get delayed by six days if the demands of the Opposition parties are met.

The Commission said, “the present system has been adopted after detailed study and consideration of all aspects, and bringing into play all safeguards and checks as have been felt necessary and when polls are imminent and polling is to commence from April 11, 2019 might not be feasible.”

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