The Supreme Court has dismissed pleas advocating for paper ballot voting, complete EVM-VVPAT verification, and physical deposit of VVPAT slips. This decision came on Friday as the court rejected petitions that sought full cross-verification of votes cast using Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT).
A bench comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta delivered two concurring verdicts on the matter. Justice Khanna, while pronouncing the judgment, stated that the court has rejected all petitions, including those pushing for a return to ballot papers in elections.
On Friday, the Supreme Court delivered its verdict on a series of petitions requesting full cross-verification of votes cast using Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT). A two-judge bench comprising Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta dismissed the pleas advocating for cross-verification.
In addition to the dismissal of the petitions, the Supreme Court issued two directives. Firstly, containers carrying the symbol loading unit should be sealed in the presence of polling agents and candidates and kept secured for a period of 45 days. Secondly, the control unit, ballot unit, and VVPAT shall be verified by engineers from the manufacturing companies after the counting results, upon a written request made within seven days of result declaration.
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