Haryana results: Despite getting thumbs-up from SC, EVMs come under attack once again

Faced with an “unexpected and surprising” drubbing at the hustings in Haryana, the Congress has refused to accept the results, raising questions over the functioning of the electronic voting machines (EVMs) in 14 assembly constituencies.

Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh alleged that there were “serious issues” with the counting process and the functioning of EVMs in 14 constituencies and that the Congress would take up the matter with the Election Commission. He termed the Haryana result as a victory of manipulations, subversion of the will of people and a defeat of transparent and democratic processes.

However, despite repeated attacks by parties losing elections, EVMs have got thumbs-up from the Supreme Court which held EVMs to be credible, reliable and totally tamperproof.

Even before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, several PILs were filed in the top court seeking return to ballot papers. However, the Supreme Court dismissed all these PILs which had alternatively sought a 100% cross-verification of votes cast through EVMs with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips.

“We must reject as foible and unsound the submission to return to the ballot paper system. The weakness of the ballot paper system is well known and documented…keeping in view the vast size of the Indian electorate of nearly 97 crore, the number of candidates…, the number of polling booths…, and the problems faced with ballot papers, we would be undoing the electoral reforms by directing reintroduction of the ballot papers,” a Bench of Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Dipankar Datta had said in its April 26 order.

“Manual counting is prone to human errors and may lead to deliberate mischief. Manual intervention in counting can also create multiple charges of manipulation of results. Further, the data and the results do not indicate any need to increase the number of VVPAT units subjected to manual counting,” it had said.

“EVMs offer significant advantages. They have effectively eliminated booth capturing by restricting the rate of vote casting to 4 votes per minute, thereby prolonging the time needed and thus check insertion of bogus votes. EVMs have eliminated invalid votes, which were a major issue with paper ballots and had often sparked disputes during the counting process,” the top court had said.

In Subramanian Swamy versus Election Commission of India (2013), the Supreme Court held that “paper trail” is an indispensable requirement of free and fair elections. The confidence of the voters in EVMs can be achieved only with the introduction of the “paper trail”. It noted that EVMs with the VVPAT system ensured accuracy of the voting system.

In N Chandrababu Naidu versus Union of India (2019), the top court said it had no doubts about the system in vogue insofar as fairness and integrity was concerned. However, having regard to the need to generate the greatest degree of satisfaction in all with regard to the full accuracy of the election results, it held that the number of EVMs to be subjected to VVPAT verification would be five per Assembly Constituency or Assembly segment in a Parliamentary Constituency, instead of one EVM per Assembly Constituency or Assembly Segment in a Parliamentary Constituency.