Context: Supreme Court issued notice to the Election Commission of India on a petition calling for counting of all Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) paper slips in elections.
About VVPAT
- Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) is an independent system attached with the Electronic Voting Machines that allows the voters to verify that their votes are cast as intended.
- When a vote is cast, a slip is printed containing the serial number, name and symbol of the candidate and remains exposed through a transparent window for 7 seconds.
- Thereafter, this printed slip automatically gets cut and falls in the sealed drop box of the VVPAT.
- This allows the voter to verify & confirm that he vote has gone to the candidate of her choice. The system has been made essential for all EVMs.
- This is due to fact that many concerns have been raised by stakeholders on the integrity of EVMs.
- Supreme Court in Subramanian Swamy vs Election Commission of India gave a judgement that 'paper trail' is an indispensable requirement for free and fair elections. Confidence of voters in EVMs can be achieved only with the introduction of 'Paper Trail'.
Current Rules for counting of VVPATs
- Limited counting of VVPATs: Presently, the VVPATs are counted in a limited sense and election results totally depend on EVM vote count. Mandatory verification of VVPAT paper slips is done, as under:
- In case of General and Bye elections to State Legislative Assembly, verification of VVPAT paper slips is done for randomly selected 5 polling stations per Assembly Constituency.
- In case of General and Bye elections to Lok Sabha, verification of VVPAT paper slips of randomly selected OS(five) polling stations of each Assembly Segment of the Parliamentary Constituency concerned.
- The mandatory counting takes place after the last round of counting of votes as recording in EVMs.
- The 5 polling stations for which the counting is to be done are randomly selected by draw of lots.
- Sequence of VVPAT count: ECI has prescribed given a priority order in which counting of VVPATs is to be done. This causes undue delay. If simultaneous verification of VVPAT paper slips is done the process of counting can be made more efficient.
Opinion of Election Commission of India
- EVMs are non-tamperable, both owing to technological and strict administrative measures. Hence, EVMs cannot be tampered with or manipulated.
- Counting all VVPATs slips manually would be labour and time-intensive and will also be prone to 'human error' and 'mischief'. This will be as going back to paper ballot system.
- According to ECI, Ballot slips of 38,156 randomly selected VVPATs have been tallied till date with the electronic counts of their control unit (CU), asserting that not a single case of transfer of vote meant for one candidate to another has been detected.