New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday adjourned a plea by 21 opposition parties seeking 50 per cent VVPAT count, and gave them until April 8 to file response to the Election Commission’s affidavit.
With less than a fortnight left for the first phase of the general elections to be held on April 11, the court sought the response, even as the EC in its affidavit on March 29, had urged for allowing the present system for the imminent elections.
The poll body had last Friday refused to entertain the opposition’s request for 50 per cent sample-matching of the EVMs with the corresponding Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails (VVPATs).
A bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Sanjiv Khanna gave a week’s time to the opposition parties as their senior counsel Abhishek Manu Singhvi sought time to file rejoinder to the stand taken by the EC.
Seeking the dismissal of the opposition’s plea, the Election Commission in its response have said that the opposition “does not raise any ground or base for altering” the existing system of sample checking.
Defending the EVMs, the polling body has said that “EVMs have completely eliminated the problem of invalid votes, which were in many cases more than the winning margin” in many constituencies.
EVM use has also substantially reduced the incidence of booth capturing , it said, pointing out that the voting machines’ use has reduced the incidence of manual error in counting. (IANS)
