SC to take up ex-Haryana minister’s petition seeking EVM verification policy on Friday

The Supreme Court will on Friday take up a petition seeking a direction to the Election Commission to put in place a policy for verification of the original burnt memory/micro-controller of the four components of electronic voting machines (EVMs) in terms of the court’s April 26 verdict in Association for Democratic Reforms Case.

The four units of EVMs are Control Unit, Ballot Unit, Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) and Symbol Loading Unit.

The petition filed by former Haryana minister and five-time MLA Karan Singh Dalal and Lakhan Kumar Singla -- a candidate in the recent Haryana Assembly poll -- is listed before a Bench led by Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna.

A Bench led by Justice Vikram Nath had on December 13 said the matter should go to the Bench (of CJI Khanna) that rejected the demand for re-introduction of paper ballots.

It was a Bench led by Justice Khanna that had on April 26 dismissed PILs seeking return to the paper ballot system or a 100% cross-verification of votes cast through EVMs with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips even as it issued certain directions to the Election Commission to strengthen the current EVM system.

Giving the thumbs up to the EVM system in the midst of the 2024 Lok Sabha election, it had said, “EVMs offer significant advantages. They have effectively eliminated booth capturing by restricting the rate of vote casting to four 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.

However, it had opened a window for the aggrieved unsuccessful candidates securing second and third places by allowing them to seek verification of microcontroller chips embedded in five per cent EVMs per assembly constituency on a written request upon payment of a fee to the poll panel.

It had mandated that five per cent of the EVMs in every assembly constituency should undergo verification by the engineers from EVM manufacturers after the election results were announced.

The petitioners, however, alleged that the EC failed to issue any such policy, leaving the procedure for burnt memory verification unclear.

Dalal and Singla secured the second-highest votes in their respective constituencies and sought a direction to the Election Commission (EC) to implement a protocol for examining the original “burnt memory” or microcontroller of the four components of the EVM — the control unit, ballot unit, VVPAT and symbol loading unit.

The petitioners -- who have filed separate election petitions challenging the results before the Punjab and Haryana High Court -- have urged the Supreme Court to direct the EC to conduct the verification exercise within eight weeks.

They sought compliance of the top court’s April 26 verdict in ‘Association for Democratic Reforms versus Union of India’.