Supreme Court to hear pleas for cross-verification of votes cast with VVPAT slips on April 16

The Supreme Court said that it will hear a batch of pleas seeking cross-verification of the votes cast with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail on April 16

The Supreme Court on April 9 said that it will hear a batch of pleas seeking cross-verification of the votes cast with Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT), on April 16.

The VVPAT is an independent vote verification system which enables an elector to see whether his vote was cast correctly. It generates a paper slip which can be viewed by the voter. It is kept in a sealed cover and can be opened in case of a dispute.

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A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta, which could not take up the petitions related to Electronic Voting Machines (EVM), said it will consider all pleas in the matter for hearing on next Tuesday.

The seven-phase Lok Sabha polls will begin on April 19.

The top court had said on April 3 it would hear next week the plea filed by NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) along with other matters after advocate Prashant Bhushan sought an urgent hearing.

On April 1, the top court sought responses from the Election Commission and the Centre on a plea by activist Arun Kumar Agrawal seeking a complete count of VVPAT slips in polls as opposed to the current practice of tallying slips from only five randomly selected EVMs from each assembly segment comprising a parliamentary constituency.