The Supreme Court on May 21 dismissed a writ petition seeking 100% random physical counting of EVM-VVPAT in the Lok Sabha polls of 2019, saying there is hardly two days left before counting and the country should be allowed to choose its government.
Dubbing the PIL filed by a collective of technocrats called ‘Tech4All’ a “nuisance”, the Vacation Bench of Justices Arun Mishra and M.R. Shah junked the PIL in a brief hearing.
The Bench pointed out that all the seven phases of polling are over and the country is looking forward to form a new government on May 23. The PIL is ill-timed and would only disrupt the electoral process which is on its last spring to the finish line.
The PIL had cited the recent allegations of changing the EVMs even as the Election Commission of India is strongly denying them.
The PIL said that though the apex court had in April raised the physical counting of Electronic Voting Machines using Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail (EVM-VVPATs) in constituencies from one to five on a plea filed by 21 Opposition parties led by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, that is not enough of a safeguard from tampering. There is a need for 100% physical counting for fool-proof poll results on May 23.
On May 7, a Supreme Court Bench led by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi had dismissed a review plea by the 21 Opposition parties to review its April judgment rejecting 50% random physical verification of Electronic Voting Machines using Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail.
