No 50% EVM-VVPAT verification as Supreme Court rejects opposition's review plea

New Delhi, May 7 The Supreme Court Tuesday expelled the review petition of 21 opposition parties looking for counter verification of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) utilizing Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPATs).

"We are not inclined to modify our request," said the SC seat led by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi while dismissing review plea on the random matching of VVPAT slips.

The top court had earlier increased the VVPAT from one EVM per Assembly segment to five randomly selected EVMs on April 8. The court said it was being done to guarantee a high level of exactness and fulfillment in the election procedure.

Twenty-one opposition groups driven by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and TDP supremo Chandrababu Naidu had looked for the review of the SC's order, saying the "increase from 1 to 5 is not a reasonable number and does not lead to satisfaction desired by this court". The parties include Congress, Telugu Desam Party (TDP), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Trinamool Congress, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)], Communist Party of India (CPI) and others. The plea was mentioned for urgent hearing before a bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Deepak Gupta.

Addressing media after the top court's hearing, senior backer Abhishek Manu Singhvi joined by Naidu, Farooq Abdullah and D Raja said that VVPAT slips checking ought to be done on somewhere around 25 percent of EVMs for the general election.

Meanwhile, Naidu has moved toward the Election Commission of India, seeking counter checking of EVMs utilizing VVPATs. In a letter to the poll panel, Naidu demanded verification of at least 50 per cent of the EVMs.