Supreme Court Dismisses Plea to Review VVPAT-EVM Verification Ruling

New Delhi : The Supreme Court has dismissed a petition seeking a review of its judgment rejecting the plea for 100 percent verification of Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) votes with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips. A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta found no grounds for revisiting the April 26 verdict, stating, “We have carefully perused the review petition, as also the grounds in support thereof. In our opinion, no case for review of the judgment dated April 26, 2024, is made out. The review petition is, accordingly, dismissed,” the bench stated in its July 25 order. The review petition, filed by Arun Kumar Agarwal, argued that there were apparent mistakes and errors in the April 26 judgment. The petitioner contended, “It is not correct to state that the result will be unreasonably delayed (by tallying EVM votes with VVPAT slips) or the manpower required will be double of that already deployed… Existing CCTV surveillance of counting halls would ensure that manipulation and mischief do not occur in VVPAT slip counting.” Agarwal’s review petition highlighted concerns about the reliability and transparency of electronic voting machines. It stated, “Electronic voting machines do not allow voters to verify that their votes have been accurately recorded. Furthermore, given their very nature, electronic voting machines are especially vulnerable to malicious changes by insiders such as designers, programmers, manufacturers, maintenance technicians, etc.” The petition further argued that due to these vulnerabilities, the previous judgment had apparent errors and should be reconsidered. On April 26, the Supreme Court had also rejected a plea to revert to the paper ballot voting system. The judgment came in response to petitions from the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), Arun Kumar Aggarwal, and others, who sought more extensive verification of EVM data against VVPAT records to ensure the accuracy and integrity of the voting process. Despite these concerns, the court maintained its position that 100 percent verification of EVM votes with VVPAT slips was not necessary.