The petition was filed by 21 Opposition parties’ leaders demanding random matching of at least 50 percent of VVPAT slips with EVMs in every Assembly segment

New Delhi: The Supreme Court (SC) today dismissed the review petition filed by 21 Opposition parties’ leaders demanding the random matching of at least 50 percent of the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips with the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in every Assembly segment during counting of Lok Sabha (LS) election votes scheduled for May 23.

In the hearing that lasted barely a minute, Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi, heading the Bench, said that the Court was “not inclined to interfere” and review its earlier order.

The Opposition leaders had filed the review petition three weeks ago after the Apex Court, on Apr.8, ordered the Election Commission to increase the physical counting of VVPAT slips to five random EVMs in each Assembly Constituency.

Citing issues with EVMs in the first few phases of polling for the LS election, the Opposition parties had filed a review petition in the SC demanding verification of 50% EVMs using VVPAT slips.

The petition claimed that after the first phase of polling,  in many cases, EVMs were found to be defective and faulty. “It has been reported that in some cases where voters would vote for one party, EVMs would record their vote having been cast for another party,” the review petition said.

The Election Commission of India (EC) has consistently maintained that the glitches experienced in the first three phases of the seven-phase election are within acceptable limits in terms of number of defects.

Speaking on the SC order, Congress leader and advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi said that the petitioners respected the Court’s order. Accepting that the Opposition’s plea was “not accepted,” Singhvi said that the Opposition had wanted VVPATs verification from 5 to 50% of EVMs.

Post the verdict, National Conference (NC) Chief Farooq Abdullah said that they accepted the Court’s order and only wanted to “aid in free and fair polls.”

The Election Commission had earlier argued that matching the VVPAT slips would delay the announcement of election results by at least six days.