Can’t control poll, hacking of EVMs mere suspicion: Supreme Court in VVPAT case

Tribune News Service

Satya Prakash

New Delhi, April 24

Maintaining that it can’t control elections, the Supreme Court on Wednesday wondered if it can issue an order on petitions seeking 100 per cent cross-verification of votes cast using EVMs with VVPAT merely on the basis of suspicion.

“Can we issue a mandamus on the basis of suspicion? The report you are relying on says there is no incident of hacking yet. We are not the controlling authority of another constitutional authority (Election Commission). We can’t control the elections,” a Bench of Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Dipankar Dutta said.

Six days after reserving verdict on petitions seeking 100 per cent cross-verification of votes cast using EVMs with VVPAT, the Bench today called a senior Election Commission official again for clarifications on certain aspects of the functioning of EVM and VVPAT. The EC official told the Bench that micro-controllers installed in the machines were one-time programmable and couldn’t be changed. The Bench told the petitioners that EVM source code couldn’t be disclosed. After interacting with the EC officials, the Bench said it would consider issuing directions to strengthen the EVM system as going back to ballot paper was out of the question.

As advocate Prashant Bhushan, representing Association for Democratic Reforms, kept raising doubts over EVMs, the Bench said, “The judgment of the Supreme Court did say VVPAT and it was followed. ”

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